A federal judge appeared on Wednesday to enter a permanent ruling that prohibits the Trump administration from implementing an executive order aimed at the Perkins Coie law firm, after repeatedly pressing a government lawyer about whether the radical efforts of President Donald Trump to attack the legal community face the Constitution.
The United States District Judge, Beryl Howell, whom Trump criticized on social networks on the early Wednesday about his assignment to the case, repeatedly suggested at the hearing that the administration’s efforts to attack the law firm who had represented or hired Trump’s opponents echoed the repression of the McCarthyism and the era of “red ascent” United States.
Trump’s executive order, which cited the old Perkins Coie representation of the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, sought to strip the security authorizations of the company’s layers, practically stop any treatment with the federal government and restrict their lawyers to access most federal buildings.
Trump has issued similar executive orders aimed at four other law firms, while at least nine law firms have signed controversial agreements with the White House, offering millions of dollars in Pro Bono works on causes backed by conservatives to avoid being attacked.
Howell and three other federal judges who supervise the legal challenges presented by law firms attacked by the White House have expressed concern about the constitutionality of the White House actions, and have granted requests for signatures to temporarily prohibit the administration to enforce them as the litigation develops.
At Wednesday’s hearing, the attached associate attorney Richard Lawson repeatedly sought to defend the executive order as legal, arguing that Trump’s opinions about the company reflected their right to freedom of expression and that the administration has a broad discretion to generate national security concerns about the work of a law firm.
But Howell was very skeptical of those defenses and only felt more frustrated when Lawson refused to answer direct questions about the purpose of the executive order.
President Donald Trump talks to journalists at the White House in Washington, on April 23, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
“Was the purpose not to force Perkins on your knees?” Howell asked.
“I don’t see it that way,” Lawson replied.
At one point in the hearing, Judge Howell punished the government for a memorandum sent to government agencies following his initial temporal restriction order that included an “additional language” indicating that the administration took Trump’s executive position was legal and believed that his tro was “wrong.”
“I will be honest, it seemed like a kind of tantrum of the Department of Justice and WBO,” said Howell, referring to the Management and Budget Office. “Worthy of a three -year -old boy, not the Department of Justice and WBO.”
Dane Butswinkas, a lawyer for Perkins Coie, argued that the executive order clearly represents against Perkins Coie, and that the Trump administration has not demonstrated how the measure protects national security.
“This is exactly the type of behavior that the Constitution prohibits,” said Butswinkas, qualifying the order as a “complete farce.”
Comparing the order with the worst of government actions during the red scare, but Swinkas urged Judge Howell to defend the rule of law by blocking the order to arise.
“Silence and fear are authoritarian play book,” Butswinkas said before thanking the other law firms, media organizations and teachers who have rejected the order. “Democracy can bend, it can be bruised, but what has shown 250 years is that it will not break.”
