Fed up with lawfare from the Left, the Trump administration is taking steps to limit the taxpayer-funded partisan activity of the American Bar Association (ABA). The ABA uses grants from the federal government to promote leftist causes. Although the 150,000-member organization is voluntary, it provides biased draft rules and policies for state bars, which those bars usually adopt and impose on attorneys required to be members to practice law.
In March, Reuters reported that White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields said in an email regarding the crackdown, “President Trump represents the people, not a board of snooty, leftist lawyers.”
On Trump’s first day in office, he issued Executive Order 14169, which froze tens of millions of dollars in USAID and State Department funding to the ABA. Some of the five grants it was about to receive totaled $3.2 million, awarded to the ABA Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence for training attorneys representing victims of gender-based and LGBTQ violence.
The ABA sued, claiming it forced the organization to lay off 300 employees, a third of its workforce. U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper of the District of Columbia, an Obama appointee, sided with the ABA, ruling that the cuts violated the ABA’s First Amendment rights, as they were allegedly made in retaliation. The Trump administration is appealing.
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