TRUMP 2.0 is turning out differently for administration lawyers than those who worked for the president the first time around, Justin Henry reports.

• Lawyers who worked in the first administration had a tougher time finding jobs than those cycling out of government roles in the past. This time around, Big Law firms in particular are much more willing to roll out the welcome mat. “When the power levers in DC are held by Republicans, it’s obviously useful to have people who understand” those levers, said Charles Cogar, former chief of staff to Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).
  
• Firms that have been targets of the president, Covington and WilmerHale, hired Trump-affiliated lawyers. Akin Gump hired a former trade adviser amid the president’s move to impose import restrictions on trade. At Brownstein, Evan Corcoran advised higher education clients before leaving to start his own firm. And Cravath hired a former high-ranking member of the DOJ’s antitrust division from Paul Weiss amid expectations that M&A activity would increase with the new administration. Read More

FEDERAL JUDGES HAVE DELIVERED plenty of sharp rebukes to the Trump administration and its lawyers in court rulings this year, but they’ve also turned that same fire on each other, including Supreme Court justices, Jacqueline Thomsen reports.

• Several judges have taken issue with the Supreme Court’s emergency docket rulings. “Bluntly put, why the Court ruled as it did remains unclear—and without reasoning, this order cannot even be considered as persuasive,” Senior US District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in a Dec. 2 opinion, about a Supreme Court order.
  
• Judge James Ho of the Fifth Circuit got creative with his analogies as he expressed concern with the amount of time a district court judge had to rule on potential removals of Venezuelan migrants. “We seem to have forgotten that this is a district court—not a Denny’s,” said Ho.
  
• Judge Lawrence VanDyke of the Ninth Circuit chose an unconventional route by filing a video dissent. VanDyke said in the video that after arguments in the case, “it became clear to me that many, including both California’s counsel and my colleagues in the majority of this case, lack the basic familiarity with handguns to understand the inherent shortcomings and obvious inadministrability of the test that California was proposing and which the majority in this case has now adopted.” Read More
  
• The Legal Accountability Project, which advocates for law clerks who work in judges’ chambers, announced Tuesday it filed a complaint against Judge Sarah Merriam of the Second Circuit after the group said it learned she’s created a “culture of fear” including bullying her clerks. The allegations come as the judiciary faces scrutiny over its workplace misconduct procedures. Merriam’s clerks said the judge yells at them over perceived errors, sends abrasive emails in all capital letters, and is prone to unexpected outbursts. The complaint also alleges that judiciary officials were alerted of the judge’s conduct but allowed her to continue supervising the clerks. Read More

THE CFPB IS REQUIRED TO SEEK FUNDS from the Federal Reserve to perform statutory functions, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in an order Tuesday clarifying an injunction that prevents the Trump administration from shuttering the agency while litigation proceeds, Ben Miller reports.

• The judge rebuffed the administration’s interpretation of its funding procedure, noting its sharp departure from the CFPB’s longstanding method of requesting funds even when the Fed is operating at a loss. Acting Director Russell Vought’s rationale that the agency wouldn’t be able to carry out its functions in fiscal 2026 due to lack of Fed funding is based on “flawed reasoning” from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel that goes against the terms the injunction Jackson entered in March, she said Tuesday.
  
• Keeping the agency open, staffed, and running requires money that Vought has no intention of asking the Fed to provide, despite a determination by Congress that the CFPB is entitled to that funding, according to Jackson. “The Court clarifies that the claimed ‘lapse’ in funding, which was manufactured by the defendants based solely on the OLC Memo, is not a valid justification for the agency’s unilateral decision to abandon its obligations under the injunction,” the judge wrote. Read More

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