Latest news with #NealKatyal
Bloomberg
31-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
US Appeals Court Skeptical of Trump Tariff Justification
Amid a flurry of announcements of last-minute deals ahead of Donald Trump's latest tariff deadline, the underlying legal justification for the US president's global trade war was the subject of significant doubt before a panel of 11 members of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington. The highly anticipated hearing was to consider a lower court ruling finding the Republican president's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to circumvent Congress's power to levy tariffs was, in fact, illegal. Neal Katyal, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, argued Trump's citation of a statute that doesn't even mention tariffs to launch an unprecedented trade war was a 'breathtaking claim to power that no president has asserted in 200 years.'
Reuters
25-07-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Law firm Milbank cuts Katyal's $3,250 rate in defending NJ cities against Trump
July 25 (Reuters) - Prominent lawyer Neal Katyal of law firm Milbank will charge a sharply reduced hourly rate and not his standard $3,250 as he helps to defend two New Jersey cities sued by President Donald Trump's administration over their immigration policies, according to a contract obtained by Reuters. Milbank's lawyers, including Katyal, will each charge $300 an hour — a fee that will be split evenly by the cities of Newark and Hoboken for the litigation in federal court in New Jersey, the contract showed. The Trump administration in May sued Newark, Hoboken and two other New Jersey cities, accusing them of being so-called sanctuary jurisdictions and obstructing federal immigration agents. Katyal in the July 11 contract said he normally charges $3,250 an hour, and that some other partners at his 1,000-lawyer firm bill hourly between $1,865 and $2,475. New York-headquartered Milbank is one of nine firms that reached deals with Trump in March and April, after he began issuing executive orders against law firms that restricted their access to government officials and federal contracting work. Milbank, which had not been hit with an order, in its deal said it earmarked $100 million in free legal services for mutually agreed-upon initiatives with the White House. Four other law firms successfully sued to block Trump's orders against them. Here, Milbank in defending the two cities said it agreed to reduce its standard rates because a third-party — the nonprofit Goodnation Foundation — is picking up part of the legal tab. Hoboken said it will not pay more than $53,000 in any calendar year to Milbank. The document did not show how much Goodnation Foundation is expected to pay, and the organization, Milbank and Katyal did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A Newark official had no immediate comment, and Hoboken did not immediately respond to a request for one. Large law firms commonly reduce their hourly rates, or sometimes bill at no cost, for legal work for state and local government clients. As hourly rates have steadily increased across the profession, at least two other law firms, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Susman Godfrey, also have hit the $3,000 an hour milestone. A January report by the Thomson Reuters Institute and the Georgetown Law Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession said clients have been willing to accept 'dramatic increases' in rates. The institute and Reuters share the same parent company. Katyal, a former acting U.S. solicitor general during President Barack Obama's administration, in 2022 was billing at $2,465 an hour when he was at law firm Hogan Lovells. He joined Milbank in February, and now leads the firm's appellate team. He has argued more than 50 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Milbank's team defending Newark and Hoboken also includes Gurbir Grewal, who is a former New Jersey attorney general and enforcement head at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and appellate specialist Colleen Roh Sinzdak. Read more: US judge slashes fees for IBM lawyers in billion-dollar software contract fight Lawyers in banking cases take a loss despite $35 million fee award US judge rejects lawyers' $94 million fee bid in auto parts pricing case Lawyers defend $205 million legal fee in US auto class action settlement More lawyers join the $3,000-an-hour club, as other firms close in
Reuters
16-07-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Law firm Milbank defends NJ cities in Trump immigration lawsuit
July 15 (Reuters) - U.S. law firm Milbank has signed on to defend two New Jersey cities that were sued by President Donald Trump's administration over their immigration policies, putting the firm at odds with the White House after it struck a deal in April to avert the president's crackdown on prominent firms. A team of Milbank lawyers is representing Newark and Hoboken in the case in federal court, new court papers showed this week. They include former Obama-era acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal and Gurbir Grewal, a former New Jersey attorney general and enforcement head at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Trump administration in May sued Newark, Hoboken and other New Jersey cities, accusing them of being so-called sanctuary jurisdictions and obstructing federal immigration agents. The lawsuit, filed in Newark, was part of the White House's broader hardline campaign against immigration. Milbank, Katyal, Grewal and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. New York-headquartered Milbank is one of nine firms that reached deals with Trump in March and April, after he began issuing executive orders against law firms that restricted their access to government officials and federal contracting work. Four other law firms successfully sued to block Trump's orders against them. Trump in his orders alleged major firms had "weaponized" the legal system through politicized cases and hires, and accused them of illegal employment practices focused on racial diversity. To rescind or head off such orders, the settling firms pledged nearly $1 billion in free legal services to mutually agreed-upon initiatives with the White House, among other concessions. Milbank, which had not been hit with an executive order, said it earmarked $100 million. Milbank Chairman Scott Edelman in a letter to the firm in April said the administration had approached it with concerns about its pro bono and diversity initiatives, suggesting it make a deal. The New Jersey case is one of at least three in which Milbank now represents Trump's legal opponents. Katyal represents a former federal official suing over what she said was her wrongful termination from a board overseeing employment complaints by government workers. He is also representing a group of five small businesses that sued to challenge Trump's across-the-board taxes on imports from nations that sell more to the United States than they buy. The administration has appealed a ruling the plaintiffs won in May. Milbank hired Grewal last year from the SEC, where he had led enforcement efforts since 2021. Katyal joined the firm in February from rival law firm Hogan Lovells, and now leads Milbank's appellate team. He has argued more than 50 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is United States v. City of Newark et al, U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, No. 2:25-cv-05081-EP-AME. Read more: Small businesses sign up prominent appellate attorney Neal Katyal in tariff case From Harvard to Musk, law firm Quinn Emanuel juggles Trump's friends and foes Law firms hire former Tesla lawyer and top conservative litigator for Trump fight Obama's top Supreme Court lawyer files lawsuit over Trump funding freeze
Reuters
25-06-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Small businesses sign up prominent appellate attorney Neal Katyal in tariff case
June 25 - A group of five small businesses on Wednesday signed up prominent appellate lawyer Neal Katyal and former federal appeals court judge Michael McConnell to defend their court victory over President Donald Trump's tariffs. Katyal, who left his longtime law firm Hogan Lovells earlier this year to lead the appellate practice at rival Milbank, is a former Acting Solicitor General of the United States. Milbank is one of the nine law firms that have struck deals with the Trump administration to provide free legal services to avoid executive orders that targeted law firms' businesses by suspending security clearances for lawyers and restricting their access to federal buildings and officials. The small businesses sued over Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs, resulting in a May 28 ruling from the Manhattan-based U.S. Court of International Trade that Trump overstepped his powers by declaring a national emergency to impose across-the-board taxes on imports from nations that sell more to the United States than they buy. The May 28 ruling also resolved a similar legal challenge brought by twelve U.S. states. Katyal said in a Wednesday statement that the lawsuit was a 'vital' challenge to presidential overreach. The Trump administration is appealing that ruling, as well as a separate court decision against the tariffs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled that the tariffs should remain in place while the appeals play out. In an appellate brief filed Tuesday night, the Trump administration argued that the tariffs have been a useful tool for negotiating trade deals, saying that the May 28 ruling threatens 'ongoing, sensitive diplomatic negotiations with virtually every major trading partner.' The Trump administration has argued that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law meant to address "unusual and extraordinary" threats during a national emergency, authorized both his broad-brush 'reciprocal' tariffs on U.S. trading partners and separate tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China over those countries' alleged failure to stop fentanyl from crossing the border into the United States. 'I used to administer IEPPA for the government, and no one ever thought it authorized what he is doing here,' Katyal said in the statement. 'These presidential actions fall on the wrong side of the line.' Katyal was acting Solicitor General under Democratic former President Barack Obama, and he has argued more than 50 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. McConnell is a Senior of Counsel at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and he previously served as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He was appointed to the 10th Circuit by then-President George W. Bush. The small businesses are also represented by the Liberty Justice Center, a legal nonprofit that focuses on defending economic liberty, private property rights, free speech and other rights, and Liberty Justice Center attorney Jeffrey Schwab argued the small businesses' case before the trade court. The U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has scheduled oral argument for July 31. The case is V.O.S. Selections Inc. et al v. Trump, U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit , No. 25-1812 For the small business plaintiffs: Neal Katyal of Milbank; Michael McConnell of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Jeffrey Scwhab and Ilya Somin of the Liberty Justice Center For the Trump administration: Brett Shumate and Eric Hamilton of the U.S. Department of Justice, among others. Read more: Trump tariffs may remain in effect while appeals proceed, US appeals court rules
News18
21-06-2025
- Politics
- News18
‘South Asian' A Term Coined To Bury Pakistanis' Crimes & Indians' Feats
Last Updated: If one wanted to be historically accurate, Indian subcontinent is a more precise term because almost all of it was once part of undivided India that was broken violently into parts Whether one should call the Indian subcontinent 'South Asia' is a debate that keeps getting regurgitated. There have been two latest triggers. First is the coverage of the sordid Pakistani gang-rape saga in which Leftist mainstream media in the West has repeatedly referred to these grooming gangs as 'Asian', in spite of the fact that these groups almost entirely comprise Pakistani Muslim men. It is as if by hiding their real identity, these newspapers and channels are shielding these monsters' sentiments from getting hurt. Whether you call a group of men 'Asian" or 'South Asian", you are erasing the national heritage with an obvious political motive. You are also intentionally hiding the truth. That is what led to the wokism getting the bad rap that it did. Deservedly so. — Anurag Mairal (@mairal) June 17, 2025 Second was a post by Neal Katyal, US Supreme Court lawyer who calls himself an 'extremist centrist". He posted approvingly about Meenakshi Ahamed's book titled Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America. But guess what? He said the book was about the 'success of the South Asian diaspora". Amused netizens immediately started asking Katyal where he found the reference to 'South Asia', when Ahamed's book is clearly and specifically titled Indian Genius? They asked why this attempt to dilute and nullify the Indian identity? If one wanted to be historically accurate, Indian subcontinent is a more precise term because almost all of it was once part of undivided India, broken violently into parts as a direct aftermath of the British divide-and-rule policy. It was as if the brown, Indian-origin Neal Katyal was enthusiastically furthering the colonial project. In case of the Pakistani rape gangs, by calling a group of men 'Asian" or 'South Asian", one is erasing the national heritage with an obvious political motive and intentionally hiding the truth, people pointed out. I'm sick and tired of hearing the expression 'South Asian" in relation to the ethnicity of the Pakistani Muslim gang rapists of young, vulnerable, white British girls. Asia has over 60% of the world's population. Pakistan, has around 3%. They should not be homogenised. — Chris Davies 🏴 🇬🇧 🇺🇸🟣 (@justchrisdavies) January 15, 2024 Different writers have held up different motives and aspects of the 'South Asia' descriptor. Samyak Dixit, for instance, writes in The Emissary: It's a small insight into how western academia builds consensus over topics and terminology, till the point where you as the subject of categorization are now being described using a term that you've never heard of before. The emotionless nature of the term itself (described by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal as 'politically neutral", which is a phrase worth exploring in itself), seeking to pull out any possible emotion or sentiment (that usually accompanies history) from the description of a region, also displays the American Regime's impulse towards sterility. This, of course, is an obvious extension of the impulse that renames blind people as 'visually impaired", or civilian casualties during war as 'collateral damage", or one that measures strontium radiation levels after a nuclear fallout in 'sunshine units". Like most Americanisms, 'South Asia" is cold, sterile, and designed to be so. The imposition of the term 'South Asia' received the maximum pushback from Indian-origin Americans who took on Western 'Indologists' who propagandised it without having any relationship with India and the subcontinent beyond an academic one. 'South Asia' seeks to describe the land mass that has historically been known in English as the 'Indian subcontinent', usurping 'Jambudvipa' and 'Bharatam' in Sanskrit, and 'Barr-e-Saghir' in Urdu. Venu Gopal Narayanan argues in Swarajya that from an ideological standpoint, it is so much easier to ensnare a pliant young mind if the old links are broken first. 'The forced popularisation of 'South Asia' over all other toponyms, including 'Bharata', was, thus, a key tool in breaking links with the past. Someone somewhere astutely understood that peddling atheism alone wasn't enough in the East, where a non-Abrahamic existence drew moral, spiritual and cultural sustenance as much from its history and geography as it did from a deity," he writes. 'East of Arabia, religion isn't the only opium of the masses; a civilizational ethos and a sacred geography too, join the list. And what better way to change that than by going to the root and changing the descriptor itself?" Indic entrepreneur, publisher, and author Sankrant Sanu had done a Google Ngram search across many scanned books and journals tracing the use of the term 'South Asia'. Squarely blaming CIA for this, he writes in his piece, 'How South Asian is a racist trope of cultural erasure': So, South Asia as a term is negligible till the 1940s, and really starts to be used in the late 1950s and 1960s. This is when the CIA is setting up 'South Asia Studies' departments in US universities. The premise of 'South Asia' is that India was never a nation or civilisation and is simply composed of different 'sub-nationalities' to be grouped together. This is, of course, ahistoric. Even in the Western consciousness, India has been a far more prominent term than 'South Asia'. Shadowy anti-India interest groups took over the cause. In 2015, the South Asia Faculty Group in California brazenly sent letters to the California Department of Education arguing for several changes in the curriculum. It demanded 'most references to India before 1947 be changed to South Asia" and also asked references to Hinduism to be changed to 'religion of ancient India". Thirty-six of these edits had to do with simply eliminating the words 'India' or 'Hinduism' from the curriculum. These diabolical changes would have sneaked into the syllabus, as the California education department was quite amenable. But a massive Hindu backlash began. The Hindu American Foundation collected more than 25,000 signatures of professors, scholars, students and parents under the 'Don't Erase India campaign. It forced the Instructional Quality Commission to retain the word India in every instance with the curriculum framework. While the old civilisation triumphed on that occasion, it underlined how one has to be constantly vigilant against attempts at its erasure by the Left and Islamists. Because words can sometimes inflict much deeper damage than ballistic weapons. Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views. tags : Indian subcontinent pakistan south asia United states Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: June 21, 2025, 11:08 IST News opinion Opinion | 'South Asian' A Term Coined To Bury Pakistanis' Crimes & Indians' Feats
