Trickle-Down Retribution
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The federal government should not punish people for challenging its policies or standing up to its demands. But that’s exactly what Donald Trump’s administration is doing.

Trump’s Department of Justice escalated its attacks on the legal profession this week as it asked a judge to impose substantial monetary sanctions ([link removed]) on Joshua Schroeder, an immigration and intellectual property lawyer who took on a pro bono deportation case. Schroeder had represented an immigrant from Laos and temporarily halted but ultimately was unsuccessful in preventing the man’s deportation.

This seems to be the first example of DOJ targeting an individual attorney following a March presidential memorandum ([link removed]) that instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to punish lawyers and law firms who “engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.” In an interview, Schroeder warned ([link removed]) that while Trump has mostly attacked big law firms, his case shows “They’re able to go all the way down to the very bottom … It’s not just this elite struggle.”

This “trickle-down” effect is deliberate. By first picking targets that evoke little public sympathy like big law firms, the administration tested how far it could go in punishing dissent. Now that it successfully blackmailed law firms into committing nearly a billion dollars ([link removed]) in pro bono work for the administration and scared them away ([link removed]) from representing many pro bono clients, the administration is honing in on communities with less power or visibility ([link removed]) .

This strategy isn’t limited to the legal profession. Harvard University has been at the forefront ([link removed]) of the administration’s hostile campaign to force higher education institutions to disown diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. The school’s refusal to capitulate resulted in the administration pulling billions of dollars of funding and the president directing the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Harvard’s tax nonexempt status.
* In May, we sued ([link removed]) the IRS, Treasury, and the Education Department for records related to these attacks. This week, we filed our opposition ([link removed]) to the IRS’s recent motion to dismiss its portion of this lawsuit.
* The IRS claims that all documents — phone logs, calendar invites, etc. — would reveal confidential tax return information if released. This ridiculous assertion would set a dangerous precedent if accepted.

As some elite schools like Columbia University have given inhttps://www.nytimes.com/article/trump-university-college.htmlto Trump’s demands ([link removed]) , the administration has widened its net to go after less prominent schools like Virginia’s George Mason University ([link removed]) . Last month, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights informed GMU that it was being investigated after an antisemitism complaint (the administration has exploited allegations of antisemitism to go after DEI initiatives). This war on DEI policies is also hurting community colleges ([link removed]) that serve nearly 40 percent of undergraduate students.

Harvard and big law firms were test cases that weaponized government agencies to punish the president’s perceived enemies and silence dissent. Now that those agencies have become the president’s attack dogs, the administration is targeting a wider range of entities for smaller and smaller acts of defiance — even just doing pro bono work in a deportation case. As civil society groups are steamrolled into compliance and those who stand up to Trump are punished, it will only become more difficult to stop Trump’s authoritarian agenda.

FOIA and Deteriorating Transparency Infrastructure

In an article for Just Security ([link removed]) , we explained how the ability to fight back against Trump’s agenda is also threatened by the administration’s “dismantling of public transparency infrastructure, which weakens the ability of journalists, watchdogs, and the public to know how those actions are happening and who is carrying them out.”
* The decimation of FOIA offices has slowed responses to a halt. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services shuttered several FOIA offices in the spring. As of early July, we have submitted 15 requests to the CDC, but have received acknowledgment of only one of the seven requests that were submitted after the reported closure on April 1, in contrast with communications and even some final responses for all eight sent before that date.
* Fee waiver denials have seemingly increased, making it more costly to obtain records. Under FOIA, agencies may waive processing fees ([link removed]) if the requested information serves the public interest. After we noticed a higher rate of fee waiver denials, we reviewed 858 of our FOIA requests sent during the first five months of 2025 and found that, of the 315 no longer “under review,” roughly 10 percent had been denied fee waivers and nearly 20 percent were marked as “conditional.”
* Accidental or arbitrary closures of FOIA requests seem to have increased even when the submitter has complied with all known requirements, frustrating even the most experienced requesters.
* The restructuring of government agencies as well as office closures have resulted in technical failures, nonfunctional email addresses, and conflicting instructions that have left many requesters without clear channels for communication with agencies.
* “Preventing the further erosion of transparency and democratic trust requires vigilance,” we wrote in Just Security. Documenting even seemingly minor issues obtaining records is important to helping transparency advocates push for improvements.


** Other Stories We’re Following
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Trump Administration Accountability
* ‘This is sending a message’: DOJ moves to sanction lawyer who took pro bono deportation case (Politico ([link removed]) )
* The FBI redacted Trump’s name in the Epstein files (Bloomberg ([link removed]) )
* Top Hegseth aide tried to oust senior White House liaison from Pentagon (Washington Post ([link removed]) )
* Gabbard overrode CIA officials’ concerns in push to release classified Russia report (Washington Post ([link removed]) )
* White House conducts de-Muskification at GSA (Politico ([link removed]) )
* Trump’s campaign to crush the media (The Atlantic ([link removed]) )
* Donor list suggests scale of Trump’s pay-for-access operation (New York Times ([link removed]) )

Voting Rights
* California Democrats look to redraw House map to counter Texas GOP (New York Times ([link removed]) )
* The Justice Department seeks voter and election information from at least 19 states, AP finds (Associated Press ([link removed]) )
* At Briefing, White House urges states to use DHS databases to check citizenship for voting (Democracy Docket ([link removed]) )
* Tulsi Gabbard calls for Obama to be prosecuted over 2016 election claims (Guardian ([link removed]) )

National News
* OpenAI is giving ChatGPT to the government for $1 (NBC News ([link removed]) )
* U.S. plans to ease human rights criticism of El Salvador, Israel, Russia (Washington Post ([link removed]) )
* RFK Jr. announces end to some mRNA contracts, including for flu, covid (Washington Post ([link removed]) )
* House Oversight Committee subpoenas Justice Department for Epstein files, high-profile former officials for depositions (CNN ([link removed]) )

LGBTQ+ Rights
* States sue Trump administration after more hospitals stop treating transgender youth (NPR ([link removed]) )
* US Air Force denies early retirement for group of transgender service members (Reuters ([link removed]) )

Abortion and Reproductive Rights
* Vermont amends law targeting pro-life pregnancy centers (Reformer ([link removed]) )
* White House has no plan to mandate IVF care, despite campaign pledge (Washington Post ([link removed]) )

Threats to Education
* Columbia and Brown to disclose admissions and race data in Trump deal (New York Times ([link removed]) )
* How Trump’s war on higher education is hitting community colleges (New York Times ([link removed]) )
* A tiny conservative news outlet pioneered the attack on higher education (New York Times ([link removed]) )
* Penn’s law school pauses scholarship honoring its first Black female graduate, plans to close equal opportunity office (Philadelphia Inquirer ([link removed]) )

Immigration
* Judge orders temporary halt to construction at Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention center (Associated Press ([link removed]) )
* Judge orders Florida, federal officials to produce ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ agreements (Associated Press ([link removed]) )
* Florida prepares to build a second immigration detention center to join ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ (Associated Press ([link removed]) )
* Homeland Security removes age limits for ICE recruits to boost hiring for Trump deportations (ABC News ([link removed]) )
* Dozens of FEMA staffers involuntarily reassigned to support deportations (Washington Post ([link removed]) )
* Hundreds of alleged human rights abuses in immigrant detention, report finds (NBC News ([link removed]) )
* Rwanda agrees to take up to 250 migrant deportees (Politico ([link removed]) )
* ICE efforts to poach local officers anger some local law enforcement leaders (NBC News ([link removed]) )

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