Trump Administration Abandons Efforts to Impose Orders on Law Firms; The New York Times, March 2, 2026

Jonah E. Bromwich and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times; Trump Administration Abandons Efforts to Impose Orders on Law Firms

The move amounts to a surrender in a clash that has led many law firms to submit to the president rather than face the threat of his executive orders

"The Trump administration on Monday abandoned its attempts to impose potentially crippling executive orders against law firms that refused to capitulate to the president, walking away from its appeal of victories the firms had won against the White House.

With a brief due this week, Justice Department lawyers told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that they were no longer interested in pursuing the cases and were voluntarily asking the court to dismiss them.

The decision is the White House’s most significant acknowledgment that the executive orders cannot be successfully defended in court. The move is particularly striking given that some firms opted to reach deals in a bid to head off executive orders that President Trump’s Justice Department said it would no longer stand behind.

The battle over the executive orders had roiled the legal establishment and led many firms to submit to Mr. Trump rather than face the existential threat his directives represented. The orders barred the firms from government business and suggested that their clients could lose government contracts, spurring widespread panic in the legal profession."