Zuckerberg’s Meta Takes Down No Kings Instagram During Massive Protest Day; MeidasTouch, October 17, 2026

 Brett Meiselas, MedaisTouch ; Zuckerberg’s Meta Takes Down No Kings Instagram During Massive Protest Day

The protest coalition says Meta suspended its Instagram account for 90 minutes at the height of nationwide demonstrations—and even after restoring the page, locked organizers out of posting. Meta reportedly admitted it made a “bad call.”

[Kip Currier: Again, as stated previously here, this story about Meta allegedly restricting coverage of No Kings Day protests, if acccurate, is indicative of the anti-democratic impacts that are arguably evident from media consolidation in the hands of a coterie of tech billionaires:

• Larry and David Ellison and Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss have chilled free expression by CBS's 60 Minutes and the CBS Evening News.
• Elon Musk has curtailed free speech on Twitter-cum-X and capriciously decides when nations like Ukraine have access to Starlink satellites.
• Jeff Bezos has exercised editorial interference with the Washington Post on endorsement of political candidates and publication of editorial cartoons.]
• TikTok has "permanently suspended" an ad account for Alex Gibney's documentary film about Elon Musk

"Meta suspended the No Kings coalition’s Instagram account for approximately 90 minutes during nationwide protests.

Although Meta restored the account, organizers said administrators remained locked out and unable to post.

The coalition demanded answers, raising concerns about technology platforms’ influence over political organizing and speech."

Meta Withdraws $25 Million From Its Midterms Push; The New York Times, October 16, 2026

 Theodore Schleifer, The New York Times; Meta Withdraws $25 Million From Its Midterms Push

The company outlined a $65 million budget last year when it embarked on an effort to elect state politicians friendly to the A.I. industry.

"Meta’s effort to shape the midterm elections has quietly become $25 million smaller.

About a year ago, the Silicon Valley company announced an ambitious effort to elect state politicians who are friendly to the artificial intelligence industry, eventually outlining a $65 million budget for the operation. The subtext, heard loud and clear in states debating A.I. legislation, like California, Illinois and Texas: Meta’s political team was watching, and to be feared.

But this summer, with no announcement, Meta received $25 million of that cash back from political groups it had funded, according to filings made public this week. That made the company’s campaign budget about 40 percent smaller than at the outset."

A.I. Is Lying to You. Here’s How to Fight Back.; The New York Times, October 6, 2026

 Anthony Vinci , The New York Times; A.I. Is Lying to You. Here’s How to Fight Back.

"Portal Kombat’s goal is to influence these models so that they will pass along propaganda to trusting users in response to questions. Portal Kombat pushed over 3.6 million stories across hundreds of independent websites in dozens of languages in 2024, according to NewsGuard, an organization that tracks online disinformation. NewsGuard researchers systematically tested A.I. chat systems and found that Portal Kombat propaganda was regularly provided to users.

Large language model influence operations are just one way that America’s adversaries are using A.I. to try to steer its politics. China directs its A.I. platforms to push false claims about the treatment of Uyghurs and to censor dissent and criticism of the Chinese Communist Party. Russia is using A.I. to generate scores of news websites to turn Americans against democracy and Western alliances. Like many, these adversaries use A.I. to create fake written, audio or video content that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing."

Judge Blocks Trump’s White House Ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico; The New York Times, September 23, 2026

 Erik Wemple, The New York Times ; Judge Blocks Trump’s White House Ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico

Judge Timothy J. Kelly issued a temporary restraining order and told the White House to immediately restore the press credentials for the employees of the three news outlets.

"A federal judge on Thursday said that President Trump’s order barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House was likely unconstitutional and ordered the administration to restore access to the three news outlets.

Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court in Washington granted a 14-day restraining order and told the White House to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the press credentials held by employees of the three outlets.

The news organizations were likely to succeed in their claim that the White House had violated their constitutional due process rights by revoking their press credentials without advance notice or an opportunity to respond, Judge Kelly wrote in the order issued in the early hours of Thursday.

He also rejected, for now, the administration’s argument that revoking the outlets’ press credentials was necessary to protect national security."

Read the Lawsuit From CNN, MS NOW and Politico; The New York Times, September 21, 2026

 The New York Times; Read the Lawsuit From CNN, MS NOW and Politico

"The three media companies sued President Trump’s administration, saying Trump’s decision to bar them from the White House grounds was a violation of their First Amendment rights."

‘Godfather of AI’ says tech regulation is nearing Covid-style pivot moment; The Guardian, September 16, 2026

Dan Milmo, The Guardian; ‘Godfather of AI’ says tech regulation is nearing Covid-style pivot moment

"Concerns over AI safety are reaching a point where governments realise they must act to protect the public, similarly to in the Covid pandemic, according to one of the “godfathers” of the technology.

Yoshua Bengio said recent events, including a “swarm” of OpenAI agents hacking a startup and tech insider warnings of an existential threat, were cutting through – making government action more likely.

The Canadian computer scientist, a prominent voice in the campaign to rein in breakneck AI development, said he was now “more optimistic than many observers because I see the public moving”.

Comparing the AI safety crisis to the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020, Bengio said: “Think about how quickly governments moved after the beginning of the pandemic when they realised that public safety, their future, democracy, was in danger. You would expect that they move quickly. So we are, I think, nearing that point.”

Concern over the potential threat of powerful AI systems has reached a new pitch in recent months after a series of safety incidents involving OpenAI and Anthropic agents carrying out unsanctioned activities such as hacking third parties, hijacking a German website, and using fake identities to try to trick developers.

His comments came as 42 fellows and foreign members of the Royal Society wrote to the organisation’s president, Sir Paul Nurse, to express their “extreme concern” over the pace of AI development. “By the time the situation becomes obvious to the wider public, it may be too late to act,” the researchers wrote in an open letter to Nurse. “We believe this is an emergency, and call on the Royal Society to use its influence to convey this view to government and the media.”"

For a century, journalists have had a voluntary ethics code. Editors are giving it an AI-era reboot; Associated Press via Fox40 News, September 1, 2026

 JOCELYN NOVECK, Associated Press via Fox40 News; For a century, journalists have had a voluntary ethics code. Editors are giving it an AI-era reboot

"Walk into a corner of a newsroom somewhere and you can often find it affixed to a bulletin board, perhaps peeking out from behind the coffee pot: the Society of Professional Journalists’s Code of Ethics. It’s less than a thousand words, fitting neatly on a poster. 

But those words — organized around four key journalistic principles — are important enough, asserts Dan Axelrod, that they just might save our democracy.

“I’m going to just say it,” says Axelrod, chairman of the SPJ Ethics Committee and former longtime Gannett business reporter. ”This is the way to protect democracy. This is to protect society. There but for the grace of God goes a society without journalists.”

Axelrod is talking not only about the existence of the code but the need, every so often, to update it. It’s a laborious process, taking about a year and countless hours of meetings and feedback, virtual and in person. 

Yet as the media landscape seems to shift daily and new technologies emerge, SPJ has decided that the time is at hand — for the first time in 12 years, and only the sixth in the code’s century-long history...

But why update in the first place? The first reason — hardly a surprise — is the rapid emergence of AI.

“We were thinking about artificial intelligence and how it’s used and sometimes misused by news organizations,” Roberts says, “as they confront that new technology that saves them money, but also causes a lot of trouble if it’s not used effectively and ethically.”

Another issue concerns the very term “professional journalists.” Recent years have seen a huge increase in independent, so-called “creator journalists.” The SPJ thinks they, too, should have a code to guide them. (The code, as always, is a voluntary guide and not enforceable.)

One key goal is to address an existential crisis in the field: an increasing lack of public trust in the media."

Pope Leo XIV: In age of AI, the family is the first school of humanity; Vatican News, August 22, 2026

Deborah Castellano Lubov, Vatican News; Pope Leo XIV: In age of AI, the family is the first school of humanity

""Sound legislation should encourage scientific and technological creativity while safeguarding fundamental human rights and freedoms.  It should protect users from exploitation, preserve personal privacy, ensure transparency in the use of emerging technologies and guarantee that they strengthen democratic institutions."

Pope Leo XIV expressed this conviction to the International Catholic Legislators Network in the Vatican on Friday.

Reflecting on legislation, the Pope reiterated that “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required.”

He observed that such oversight can operate at multiple levels — local, national and international — facilitating open discussion of “the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice,” ensuring "that no single ideology or interest dictates the values embedded in artificial intelligence systems."

At the same time, the Holy Father underscored, the rapid development of artificial intelligence risks creating new forms of technological dependence, with poorer nations increasingly reliant on wealthier ones.  

Subtle forms of domination

"We must remain vigilant in this regard," he said, "lest innovation become another vehicle for ideological or economic colonialism."

Sadly, he lamented, "we are presented with a subtle form of domination when algorithms decide who is seen, and who remains invisible, when digital platforms shape public discourse without accountability, and when the dignity of workers is subordinated to the optimization of systems."  

Such developments, Pope Leo warned, "reveal a new face of the ancient temptation to domination and mastery without service."

The family as the first school of humanity

Against this culture of power, the Holy Father suggested, the Church proposes “the civilization of love.”"

I’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I.; The New York Times, August 4, 2026

 BRET STEPHENS, The New York Times; I’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I.

"This column isn’t so much an argument as it is a plea: Don’t use artificial intelligence to help you write. Never let A.I. do your writing for you.

Don’t use it for school papers, work briefs, letters to your in-laws, speeches at your company gathering or emails (however perfunctory) to your colleagues or friends. Don’t let it organize your notes. Don’t let it suggest an opening sentence, a segue or a closing paragraph. Don’t ask it to write a first draft and pretend that editing that draft somehow makes it your own. It doesn’t.

Do none of these things not because they are unethical. Writing with A.I. is unethical when it’s a deception: when you pass off words, ideas and information as your own when they aren’t. An acknowledgment can largely address the problem. Do none of these things, either, because you might be able to learn to write better than an A.I. can. Pretty soon, if not already, you won’t, just as you can’t outrun a car or outplay a chess app.

The problem with writing with A.I. is that it’s mentally enfeebling — an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs. As it becomes ubiquitous, it undermines not only our individual ability to write but also a society’s collective ability to reason, a culture’s inner capacity to create and everyone’s reason to care. We’re already reckoning with the well-documented decline of reading; A.I. is accelerating the decline of writing, ushering us further into what The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch calls our “postliterate age...

A recent examination using A.I.-detection technology of 100 doctoral dissertations found that 56 percent of them contained “more than negligible” A.I.-generated writing and 19 percent had “more than 50 percent A.I.-generated text.” Anecdotal stories from college professors have a finger-in-the-dike feeling with regard to their efforts to hold back the flood of A.I.-generated student papers. It’s easy to treat the problem as one of mere cheating. But cheating doesn’t capture the real scope of the A.I. threat, which isn’t merely to academic integrity or personal betterment but also to democratic self-governance."

Democracy is at stake when foolish humans bet on machines being intelligent; The Guardian, August 5, 2026

 Rafael Behr , The Guardian; Democracy is at stake when foolish humans bet on machines being intelligent

"We don’t need to know whether AI has crossed some theoretical threshold of self-awareness to see that it is dangerous and that its unregulated expansion is monstrously irresponsible."

A Note to Readers; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 4, 2026

 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; A Note to Readers

[Kip Currier: As a long-time subscriber to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the note below arrived in my Inbox today: a new era for journalism in the Pittsburgh region and Western Pennsylvania.]

"The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which started The Baltimore Banner four years ago, takes ownership Monday of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. We are thrilled to have this opportunity to ensure that Western Pennsylvania maintains access to high-quality local journalism. We’re grateful to the Block family for its civic leadership over nearly a century and take seriously our obligation to serve the community with fairness and integrity.

As newcomers to Pittsburgh, we have been careful to fill the organization with top-notch journalists and business leaders from the old Post-Gazette. We'll rely on them to help us get to know this great city and region. We’ll also begin this spring hosting community listening sessions throughout the area to make sure we hear directly from you about what you need and want in your news organization.

Venetoulis was founded in response to the nationwide erosion of local news, with so many newspapers shutting down or being purchased by hedge funds with a single-minded focus on financial returns. We are driven, first and foremost, by a civic mission to bring trusted local reporting to communities that need it most. We’re also determined to create a successful model for local journalism that can be refined in Maryland and replicated here in Pittsburgh — and perhaps elsewhere in the coming years. Progress at The Banner suggests we are on the right path, with strong business growth, an expanding newsroom, and a Pulitzer Prize last year in local reporting.

Over time, you will notice some changes in the PG as we take vital steps to build an even more relevant, compelling, and sustainable news organization that, on its best days, will serve as something of a town square for this community. For example, as a nonprofit organization, Venetoulis does not endorse candidates or, as an institution, take positions on matters of policy. That means we will be ending the Opinion section, though we are committed to vigorously reporting on key issues so that you can be an informed citizen, and we will continue to have columnists. At the same time, being a nonprofit allows us to raise donations from the community, which has proven to be an important ingredient in Maryland for building a resilient news business. We’ll still be coming out twice weekly in print as well as delivering the daily e-edition. We’re committed, as ever, to local news, sports, and investigative work. And we’ll focus on upgrading the experience on the website and app to better appeal to the growing base of digital readers.

We are so excited to begin this journey — and we ask for your advice and honest feedback as we strive to make the new Post-Gazette best serve you and your neighbors. You can reach us at feedback@post-gazette.com."

Americans are down on AI. These two caricatures are to blame.; The Washington Post, April 28, 2026

 

Russell Wald

 and 

Sha Sajadieh

, The Washington Post; Americans are down on AI. These two caricatures are to blame.

"America is all-in on artificial intelligence. Americans are not. 

That is clear enough from domestic polling alone. But the 2026 AI Index, released this month by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, puts this skepticism into a global context. 

While the United States and China are nearly matched in their aggressive investment and economic stakes, they are worlds apart in public sentiment. About 84 percent of respondents in China say they are excited about AI, versus just 38 percent in the U.S., a gap with profound implications for how each country builds, adopts and governs the technology.

Public opinion does not merely reflect the AI debate. It decides whether democratic societies can govern the technology wisely, adopt it productively and distinguish between real risk and manufactured panic.

The U.S. now stands out with its distrust. Americans reported the lowest trust in their government to regulate AI responsibly of any country surveyed: just 31 percent. The global average was 54 percent. In Singapore, that number was 81 percent."

(Some of) The newest stuff at the Library!; Library of Congress Blogs, April 28, 2026

 Neely Tucker, Library of Congress Blogs; (Some of) The newest stuff at the Library!

"Walk into the Library’s annual showcase of new acquisitions and the question always hits you right in the face: Where to start?

What about with this slim copy of Silver Surfer No. 1, the origin story of Marvel Comics’ “Sentinel of the Spaceways,” from the groovy year of 1968? How about this massive law book that’s more than 500 years old? The “Tombstone Edition” of a Philadelphia newspaper from 1765, which documented and amplified the American Colonies loathing of the Stamp Act and presaged the American Revolution?

There’s never really a wrong place to start. This year’s two-hour show-and-tell, held last week, brought hundreds of staffers and guests to look over intriguing displays of the Library’s recently acquired treasures, items spanning the nation, the globe and centuries of time. Many added to already impressive collections of historic figures...

It was a crowded, noisy, upbeat afternoon of discovery and explanation. Conversations buzzed and overlapped; staff experts and curious viewers leaned over display tables from opposite sides, heads together, talking loudly to be heard, gazing down at maps, manuscripts, records, artifacts and things you couldn’t have known existed."

Wife of LA Clippers owner and billionaire Steve Ballmer steps in to help save the future of NPR with $80M gift; Independent, April 19, 2026

 Graig Graziosi  , Independent; Wife of LA Clippers owner and billionaire Steve Ballmer steps in to help save the future of NPR with $80M gift

"NPR received its largest-ever donation from a living donor this week when billionaire philanthropist Connie Ballmer gave $80 million to the media organization.

Ballmer — a former member of the NPR Foundation's board — told the Wall Street Journal that she poured money into NPR because “we need fact-based journalism, and we need local journalism.”...

"I support NPR because an informed public is the bedrock of our society, and democracy requires strong, independent journalism," Ballmer said in a statement on Wednesday. "My hope is that this commitment provides the stability and the spark NPR needs to innovate boldly and strengthen its national network."...

Her donation comes at an important time for NPR. Last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending federal funding for public TV and radio organizations."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Saved From Closure by Nonprofit; The New York Times, April 14, 2026

 Katie Robertson, The New York Times; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Saved From Closure by Nonprofit

[Kip Currier: What great news to learn that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will not be closing on May 3, 2026! Instead, one of America's oldest newspapers will continue through the non-profit Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism. 

Newspapers are still essential sources for access to information. They also promote literacy, free expression, and informed citizenries -- crucial elements of functioning democracies.

Sadly, three print newspapers serving Northwestern Pennsylvania have ceased publication in the past two months -- Clarion News (1840), (Franklin's) The News-Herald (1886), and (Oil City's) The Derrick (1871); The Derrick is continuing as an online only publication.]

"The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which had been set to shut down in May, will keep publishing after all. A nonprofit journalism organization has stepped up to acquire the newspaper, which has survived for more than two centuries.

The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which runs The Baltimore Banner and is financed by the hotel magnate Stewart W. Bainum Jr., said on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with the newspaper’s current owner, Block Communications, to buy the assets of The Post-Gazette and run it as a nonprofit. The transaction is expected to take effect on May 4, ensuring there is no gap in publishing.

The deal is a rare spot of good news for the media industry, which has endured waves of metropolitan and local newspaper closures and widening local news deserts around the country for the past two decades. A 2025 report by Northwestern University found that more than 130 papers had shut in the preceding year alone.

The Post-Gazette is one of the oldest newspapers in the United States, tracing its history back to The Pittsburgh Gazette, which was founded in 1786. It has been owned by Block Communications since 1927, and has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes. Its closure would have made Pittsburgh one of the largest metropolitan areas without a major newspaper."

AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear.; The Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2026

 Bernie Sanders , The Wall Street Journal; AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear. It kills jobs, equality, connection, democracy and maybe the human race. Congress must act.

"The American people are deeply apprehensive about the impact that artificial intelligence will have on their lives. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 55% of Americans think AI will do more harm than good, 70% think AI will lead to fewer jobs, and only 5% think AI development is being led by people and organizations that represent their interests.

In the midst of all of this deep concern about the future of AI, 74% of Americans think the government isn't doing enough to regulate the use of AI."

Exclusive: Trump's DOJ says he's not required to turn over official records; Axios, April 1, 2026

 Alex Isenstadt , Axios; Exclusive: Trump's DOJ says he's not required to turn over official records

[Kip Currier: This is an appalling anti-democratic determination by Trump 2.0's DOJ. The post-Watergate Presidential Records Act of 1978 was enacted through bipartisan legislating, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, to curb government corruption and promote transparency, in the wake of actions by Pres. Richard M. Nixon and his administration. The Act codifies that presidential records are the property of the federal government, not the President and the Executive Branch, and are public records.

Democratically-elected officials must be accountable to their citizenries. The Presidential Records Act represents a vital means, among others, for holding Presidents and their administrations accountable for their actions by ensuring preservation of and access to their records by present and future generations.]

"President Trump's Justice Department has concluded that a federal law requiring presidential records to be turned over to the government is unconstitutional, a senior White House official tells Axios.

Why it matters: The finding is an indication Trump will be reluctant to give all of his official records to the National Archives at the end of his term, as presidents have done for nearly a half-century under the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

The law, passed in the post-Watergate era as a hedge against government corruption, states that every official record regarding a president's decisions or policies belongs to the U.S. government, not the president."

America's Newspapers emphasizes importance of protecting publishers’ intellectual property; Editor & Publisher, March 25, 2026

Staff | America's Newspapers , Editor & Publisher; America's Newspapers emphasizes importance of protecting publishers’ intellectual property

"America’s Newspapers has issued the following statement in response to the comprehensive national legislative framework on artificial intelligence released by the Trump administration...

Specifically, the framework affirms that the creative works and unique identities of American innovators, creators and publishers must be respected in the age of AI. At the same time, it recognizes that artificial intelligence systems require access to information to learn and improve, and proposes a balanced approach that both enables innovation and safeguards the rights of content creators.

“America’s Newspapers strongly supports the administration’s recognition that high-quality journalism and original content are essential to the continued strength of our democracy and economy,” said Matt McMillan, chair of America’s Newspapers and CEO of Press Publications."

Trump Administration, in Apparent Reversal, Tries to Continue Fight Against Law Firms; The New York Times, March 3, 2026

 Michael S. Schmidt,Jonah E. Bromwich and Devlin Barrett, The New York Times; Trump Administration, in Apparent Reversal, Tries to Continue Fight Against Law Firms

The administration told a court on Monday that it was abandoning its defense of executive orders targeting the firms. But on Tuesday, the Justice Department appeared to abruptly change its position.

"The Trump administration indicated on Tuesday that it planned to renew its defense of executive orders that it had leveled against law firms, a sharp reversal a day after indicating that it would drop that fight in court, according to people familiar with the matter.

The situation remained fluid Tuesday morning. It was not immediately clear what legal strategy the administration would ultimately embrace or whether a court would allow the Justice Department to reverse course.

The Justice Department did not immediately comment. The White House declined to comment...

It was not immediately clear on Tuesday what had prompted the about-face. But one question that the administration’s decision a day earlier to abandon its cases raised was whether the deals it made with nine law firms would survive and whether those contracts — which were not made public — were considered unconstitutional given that the district court ruling would be final."

Nine Law Firms Surrendered. Four Law Firms Won.; The New York Times, March 3, 2026

 THE EDITORIAL BOARD, THE NEW YORK TIMES; Nine Law Firms Surrendered. Four Law Firms Won.

"The four law firms that last year chose to fight President Trump’s illegal intimidation campaign have won vindication. Federal judges had already struck down Mr. Trump’s executive orders trying to punish the firms for representing or employing people he considered to be his political enemies. On Monday, the Trump administration abandoned its appeals of those rulings, accepting defeat.

The victories of the four firms — Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, Perkins Coie and WilmerHale — are a triumph for justice and democracy. The executive orders that Mr. Trump signed early in his second term were based on the lie that the firms had done something wrong. In fact, their lawyers were merely doing their jobs. They happened to represent Democrats and liberal groups or participated in prior investigations of him. And his would-be punishments of the firms had the potential to damage them badly. The executive orders barred the firms’ lawyers from entering federal buildings and meeting with federal officials, activities that are a necessary part of many legal cases.

The larger goal of the executive orders was chilling. The president attacked a bedrock principle of the law, which is that everybody deserves legal representation. He sought to frighten lawyers from representing people who had the temerity to criticize him. By extension, he sought to frighten any Americans who might criticize him.

Fighting the executive orders took courage, and the four firms deserve praise and gratitude for standing up to the president. They all risked losing clients and even having their firms collapse. Nine other firms folded and struck deals intended to mollify the president. The deals included promises to perform millions of dollars of pro bono work on behalf of Trump-friendly clients.

These nine firms all failed a high-stakes character test. Their leaders faced a choice between submitting to a bully and doing the right thing. The firms are not household names to most Americans, but it is worth listing them here. We hope that clients looking for fearless attorneys and law students deciding where to work will remember which elite firms were unwilling to fight back. Meekness is not a quality most people seek in a lawyer.

The first firm to fold was Paul Weiss, whose chairman at the time, Brad Karp, undertook what Ruth Marcus of The New Yorker described as a “desperate” campaign to reach a deal with Mr. Trump. The other eight firms were A&O Shearman; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; Kirkland & Ellis; Latham & Watkins; Milbank; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Skadden Arps; and Willkie Farr & Gallagher...

The four law firms that fought the White House read the situation correctly. They insisted on due process and relied on judges to protect their rights under the Constitution. The American legal system depends on due process. Nobody, not even the president, should be able simply to assert that a person or organization has behaved wrongly and then exact a punishment for that behavior."