From friends to foes: how Trump turned on the Federalist Society
The world's attention last week was gripped by Donald Trump's abrupt fallout with the tech tycoon Elon Musk. Yet at the same time, and with the help of a rather unflattering epithet, the president has also stoked a rift between his Maga royal court and the conservative legal movement whose judges and lawyers have been crucial in pulling the US judiciary to the right.
The word was 'sleazebag', which Trump deployed as part of a lengthy broadside on Truth Social, his social media platform. The targets of his wrath were the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal organization, and Leonard Leo, a lawyer associated with the group who has, in recent years, branched out to become one of the most powerful rightwing kingmakers in the US.
In his post, Trump said that during his first term 'it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real 'sleazebag' named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions. He openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court – I hope that is not so, and don't believe it is!'
Founded in 1982, the Federalist Society is an important player in the conservative movement. Many conservative lawyers, judges, law students and law clerks are members of the group, attend its events or run in its general orbit. Republican presidents use its recommendations to pick judges for vacant judicial seats.
In the days following Trump's Truth Social harangue, people in the conservative legal world, which is centered in Washington DC but spans law schools and judge's chambers across the country, are wondering what this rift portends. Is this a classic Trump tantrum that will soon blow over? Or does it speak to a larger schism, with even the famously conservative Federalist Society not rightwing enough – or fanatically loyal enough – to satisfy Trump?
'I don't think this will blow over,' Stuart Gerson, a conservative attorney and a former acting US attorney general, said. 'Because it's not an event. It's a condition … He thinks judges are his judges, and they're there to support his policies, rather than the oath that they take [to the constitution].'
In recent months, Trump has been stymied repeatedly by court rulings by federal judges. His rage has been particularly acute when the judges are ones whom he or other Republican presidents appointed. The Maga world has turned aggressively against Amy Coney Barrett, for example, after the supreme court justice voted contrary to the Trump line in several key cases.
The immediate cause of Trump's recent outburst was a ruling by the US court of international trade against his sweeping tariffs on foreign goods. In this case, his anger appears to have had less to do with the judges than with the fact that a group of conservative lawyers and academics, including one who co-chairs the board of the Federalist Society, had filed a brief in the case challenging his tariffs.
Trump is probably also aware that the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), an anti-regulation, pro-free market legal group affiliated with Leo and the billionaire Charles Koch, has sued, separately, to stop the tariffs.
John Vecchione, an attorney at the NCLA, noted that the Federalist Society is a broad tent, with conservative jurists of many different inclinations and factions, including free marketeers and libertarians who do not subscribe to Trump's economic nationalism. Members often disagree with each other or find themselves on different sides of a case. This February, a federal prosecutor affiliated with the group, Danielle Sassoon, resigned after she said the Trump administration tried to pressure her to drop a case.
The 'real question', Vecchione said, is what diehard Maga lawyers closest to Trump are telling him.
'Are they trying to form a new organization? Or are they trying to do to the Federalist Society what they've done to the House Republican caucus, for instance … where nobody wants to go up against Trump on anything?' he said. 'I think that some of the people around Trump believe that any right-coded organization has to do his bidding.'
A newer legal organization, the Article III Project (A3P), appears to have captured Trump's ear in his second term. The organization was founded by Mike Davis, a rabidly pro-Trump lawyer, and seems to be positioning itself as a Maga alternative to the Federalist Society. On its website, A3P claims to have 'helped confirm' three supreme court justices, 55 federal circuit judges and 13 federal appellate judges.
Sign up to This Week in Trumpland
A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration
after newsletter promotion
Davis recently asserted in the Hill that the Federalist Society 'abandoned' Trump during his various recent legal travails. 'And not only did they abandon him – they had several [Federalist Society] leaders who participated in the lawfare and threw gas on the fire,' Davis said.
Although Leo was a 'a close ally' of Trump during his first term, the Wall Street Journal reported, Trump and Leo 'haven't spoken in five years'.
Leo has responded to Trump's outburst delicately. In a short statement, he said he was 'very grateful for President Trump transforming the federal courts, and it was a privilege being involved', adding that the reshaping of the federal bench would be 'President Trump's most important legacy'.
Yet this Tuesday, a lengthy piece in the Wall Street Journal – pointedly titled 'This Conservative Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You, After Getting Dumped by Trump' – argued that Leo is 'unbounded by the pressures of re-election or dependence on outside money', and is the 'rare conservative, who, after being cast out of Trump's inner circle, remains free to pursue his own vision of what will make America great again'. In 2021, a Chicago billionaire gave Leo a $1.6bn political donation, thought to be the largest such donation in US history. As a result, Leo has an almost unprecedented power in terms of dark-money influence.
The article also noted that much of Leo's focus has shifted to the entertainment industry, where he is funding big-budget television series and films that channel conservative values.
Vecchione thinks that Trump's tendency to surround himself with sycophants and loyalists will work against him.
'If you have a lawyer who only tells you what makes you happy, and only does what you say to do, you don't have a good lawyer,' Vecchione said. 'That's not a good way to get lawyers. Not a good way to get judges, either.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
16 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS ABC News star SUSPENDED over late-night clash with Trump and top White House officials
ABC News' political correspondent Terry Moran has been suspended after slamming a Trump adviser in a late night post to his social media. Moran, who sat down with the president in April, hit out at his Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as being 'richly endowed with the capacity for hatred'. In a now deleted post to his X account, the ABC News correspondent said that Miller was the 'bile' behind the Trumpist movement. Moran said: 'Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He's a world class hater. 'You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He east his hate. 'Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end his own glorification. That's his spiritual nourishment.' In a statement to Deadline, the network said: 'ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others. 'The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards — as a result, Terry Moran has been suspended pending further evaluation.' In a now deleted post to his X account, the ABC News correspondent said that Miller was the 'bile' behind the Trumpist movement The late night tirade was deleted but not before screenshots of his post were shared elsewhere on the site. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted it on her own page, and blasted the comments. She said: 'Last night, in a since deleted post, so-called 'journalist' @TerryMoran went on a rampage against Stephen Miller and called President Trump 'a world class hater.' 'This is unhinged and unacceptable. We have reached out to @ABC to inquire about how they plan to hold Terry accountable.' Miller also waded in, saying: 'The most important fact about Terry's full public meltdown is what it shows about the corporate press in America. 'For decades, the privileged anchors and reporters narrating and gatekeeping our society have been radicals adopting a journalist's pose. Terry pulled off his mask.' Moran currently covers the White House, Supreme Court and presidential campaigns for the outlet. He had been hand-picked by Trump, he claimed, to sit down with the president for his first interview with the network since he won a $15 million lawsuit against ABC. The late night tirade about Miller, seen here, was deleted but not before screenshots of his post were shared elsewhere on the site In a heated moment where Moran attempted to fact-check Trump, the president revealed that the choice wasn't exactly a compliment. 'They're giving you the big break of a lifetime. I picked you to do the interview because frankly, I'd never heard of you, but you're not being very nice,' Trump said. The comments about Miller, seen as an immigration hardliner, came as pro-migrant riots in California raged on - resulting in Trump calling in the national guard.
The Independent
25 minutes ago
- The Independent
National Guard troops arrive in Los Angeles on Trump's orders to quell immigration protests
National Guard troops began arriving in Los Angeles early Sunday on orders from President Donald Trump in response to clashes in recent days between federal immigration authorities and protesters seeking to block them from carrying out deportations. Members of California's National Guard were seen staging early Sunday at the federal complex in downtown Los Angeles that includes the Metropolitan Detention Center, one of several sites that have seen confrontations involving hundreds of people in last two days. The troops included members of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, according to a social media post from the Department of Defense that showed dozens of National Guard members with long guns and an armored vehicle. Trump has said he is deploying 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell the protests, which he called 'a form of rebellion.' Early Sunday, the deployment was limited to a small area in downtown Los Angeles. The protests have been relatively small and limited to a downtown section. The rest of the city of 4 million people is largely unaffected. Their arrival follows clashes near a Home Depot in the heavily Latino city of Paramount, south of Los Angeles. As protesters sought to block Border Patrol vehicles, with some hurling rocks and chunks of cement, federal agents unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls. Tensions were high after a series of sweeps by immigration authorities the previous day, as the weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the city climbed past 100. A prominent union leader was arrested while protesting and accused of impeding law enforcement. On Sunday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the National Guard would 'keep peace and allow people to be able to protest but also to keep law and order.' In a signal of the administration's aggressive approach, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also threatened to deploy active-duty Marines 'if violence continues' in the region. The move came over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsome, marking the first time in decades that a state's national guard was activated without a request from its governor, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Newsom, a Democrat, said Trump's decision to call in the National Guard was 'purposefully inflammatory." He described Hegseth's threat to deploy Marines on American soil as 'deranged behavior.' Trump's order came after clashes in Paramount and neighboring Compton, where a car was set on fire. Protests continued into the evening in Paramount, with several hundred demonstrators gathered near a doughnut shop, and authorities holding up barbed wire to keep the crowd back. Crowds also gathered again outside federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles, including a detention center, where local police declared an unlawful assembly and began to arrest people.
The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Sanders warns of authoritarianism after Trump deploys national guard to LA
Bernie Sanders warned of the US's slide into authoritarianism following Donald Trump's decision to deploy the national guard to Los Angeles over the city's protests against federal immigration raids. Speaking to CNN on Sunday, the leftwing Vermont senator said: 'We have a president who is moving this country rapidly into authoritarianism … My understanding is that the governor of California, the mayor of the city of Los Angeles did not request the national guard but he thinks he has a right to do anything he wants.' Sanders, and many others, have long warned for the potential risk to American democracy that Trump represents in his second term. Since returning to the White House Trump has roiled American politics and civic life with numerous actions including attacking universities, slashing government spending and firing tens of thousands of employees and rolling back the rights of LGBTQ+ people. Sanders added: 'He is suing the media who criticizes him. He is going after law firms who have clients who were against him. He's going after universities that teach courses that he doesn't like. He's threatening to impeach judges who rule against him. And he's usurping the powers of the United States congress. This guy wants all of the power. He does not believe in the constitution. He does not believe in the rule of law.' Pointing to the Republican-led House and Senate, Sanders went on to say that the future of the US 'rests with a small number of Republicans in the House and Senate who know better, who do know what the constitution is about'. 'It's high time they stood for our constitution and the rule of law,' Sanders said. His latest interview comes after widespread backlash from California leaders towards Trump's decision to deploy 2,000 California national guards to respond to the immigration protests. Trump's decision came at the objection of California governor Gavin Newsom, who called it 'purposefully inflammatory.' 'The federal government is taking over the California National Guard and deploying 2,000 soldiers in Los Angeles – not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle,' Newsom said, adding: 'Don't give them one.' Over the weekend, Los Angeles has been rocked by widespread protests in response to the Trump administration's draconian immigration raids against migrant communities. Trump's deployment of the national guard marks the first time a US president wielded such power since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles over the brutal beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist, by four white police officers who were acquitted.
