by Jordan Rubin | Mar 6, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The Supreme Court wrapped up its latest two-week hearing session, featuring a trippy oral argument on gun rights for drug users. The GOP-appointed supermajority also helped New York Republicans hold on to a congressional seat, backed California parents over the state’s school transgender policies and shut the courthouse door on prisoners trying to file lawsuits claiming unconstitutional treatment.
Looking ahead, Steve Bannon is poised for good news from the justices as soon as Monday morning. That’s when the court is next slated to publish an order list with action on pending appeals. Among the many petitions at the high court is Bannon’s, which he filed last fall, seeking review of an appellate ruling that upheld his contempt conviction for blowing off the House Jan. 6 committee.
The Trump ally’s appeal took an unusual path, because the Justice Department initially waived its right to respond to his petition. That would have normally led the court to deny it outright, leaving his conviction intact. But then the court requested a response — a move that’s not unheard of but is especially noteworthy here because of what happened next.
In a typical criminal case, the DOJ’s response would’ve been a brief opposing high court review and seeking to uphold the conviction. But here, the department asked the court to vacate the appellate ruling so that the government can move to dismiss the case completely in the trial court.
The administration didn’t specify why it wanted to abandon Bannon’s case at this point, only that it “has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.”
by Jordan Rubin | Mar 6, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
“Do you really think the president can pre-emptively pardon crimes that haven’t even been charged or convicted just because Joe Biden did it?” – Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,
No. In a recent answer regarding Donald Trump’s options before he leaves office, I mentioned Joe Biden’s pardons only by way of example.
Even if Biden hadn’t issued any pardons at all, that wouldn’t have altered the long-held understanding that presidents can issue pre-emptive pardons.
When I explored the subject in an answer in December 2024 — before Biden granted his final clemency actions the following month — I noted that the Supreme Court had observed 160 years ago that the pardon power “extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.”
More recently, one of the nation’s most famous — or infamous — clemency grants was Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon, which Ford bestowed pre-emptively, without Nixon having been charged in the Watergate scandal that prompted his resignation. Ford said at the time that “serious allegations and accusations hang like a sword over our former president’s head, threatening his health as he tries to reshape his life, a great part of which was spent in the service of this country and by the mandate of its people.”
Of course, it could be said that the Nixon pardon set the stage for today’s presidential unaccountability and attendant pardons that are clearly corrupt, even if they’re nevertheless legal due to the vast nature of this particular constitutional power.
But that vast power predates Biden and Trump and will outlast them both. The main power that the American people
by Jordan Rubin | Mar 6, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Florida Bar has opened an investigation into Lindsey Halligan, the Donald Trump lawyer whose illegal temporary stint as a top federal prosecutor in Virginia led to dismissal of the revenge-backed prosecutions she brought against Trump targets James Comey and Letitia James. Halligan has since left the Justice Department, but the question remains whether she’ll face any professional discipline from her brief but destructive tenure, which has drawn ethical complaints.
While the answer to that question remains unclear, we learned that there was a possible step taken in that direction in Florida. The New York Times reported Thursday on the existence of a letter confirming an investigation, sent by the bar last month to Campaign for Accountability, a group that had filed a bar complaint against Halligan in the Sunshine State, where she’s licensed, as well as in Virginia, the scene of alleged ethical violations.
The complaint cited several rules of professional conduct that the group said Halligan “may have violated” in service of Trump’s quest for revenge against Comey, the former FBI director, and James, New York’s attorney general. A judge dismissed their cases last year due to the illegality of Halligan’s appointment without Senate confirmation. The administration is appealing.
In the bar complaint, Campaign for Accountability cited rules requiring candor to the court and competence, as well as ones prohibiting extrajudicial statements; knowingly bringing a charge unsupported by probable cause; and being dishonest and deceptive. When the complaint was filed, I noted some challenges it might face in terms of proving the allegations, as well as the fact that the Florida Bar had previously refused to even consider ethical claims against Attorney General Pam Bondi, on the grounds that the bar said
by Jordan Rubin | Feb 25, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Florida executed Melvin Trotter on Tuesday for the 1986 murder of Virgie Langford. The Supreme Court refused to halt the execution. No justices dissented.
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has long shined a light on death penalty problems, still used the case to express her concerns with how the state carries out the ultimate punishment.
Trotter argued there was too great a risk that Florida would bungle its lethal injection procedure and violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Sotomayor said he didn’t show enough evidence on that score to satisfy the strict test laid out by the court’s Republican-appointed majority.
“Even so, the record to date is troubling,” the Obama appointee wrote in a statement accompanying the denial of Trotter’s appeal.
That record, Sotomayor wrote, “reflects at least the possibility that recent Florida executions have involved — in addition to expired drugs — incorrect drug doses, the use of nonprotocol drugs, and recordkeeping lapses that could mask yet additional failings.”
The problem, she wrote, is that the state’s high court doesn’t let inmates examine the records that could let them prove their constitutional claims.
“In doing so, the Florida Supreme Court appears to be placing prisoners in a Catch-22,” she wrote, explaining the no-win situation for inmates who can’t prove their claims because they can’t gather the necessary information to do so.
“Individuals seeking to challenge the method of their execution should not have to guess at whether the State is, or is not, following its execution protocol,” Sotomayor wrote, adding that the state doesn’t have a legitimate interest in secrecy, and transparency would instill confidence “for everyone — prisoners, the courts, and the public alike.”
That is, if the state protocol is
by Jessica Levinson | Feb 14, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. I’m filling in for Jordan Rubin, who is off today.
This week, a federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump correctly blocked a Texas law designed to punish companies for factoring environmental, social and governance concerns into their investment decisions. Yes, you read that correctly. And no, it isn’t constitutional.
Back in 2021, Texas attempted to prohibit state agencies from investing in or contracting with firms it accused of boycotting fossil fuel companies. To be clear, this is an example of the government punishing private companies for engaging in investment decisions motivated by disfavored viewpoints.
Texas’ law is antithetical to the First Amendment, which bars the government from picking who does and doesn’t get to speak. The First Amendment can protect corporations from being punished by the government when their investment decisions are expressive. Why? Because economic decisions may be protected as expressive conduct covered by the First Amendment.
Conditioning access to state investment funds on confirming with a certain ideology, Texas crossed a clear constitutional line. Governments can’t strong-arm private actors, including corporations, into ideological conformity by slapping the word “economic” on what is expressive conduct. Dressing up viewpoint discrimination as financial regulation doesn’t make the Constitution disappear.
Note for a moment, the irony. If, as some conservative lawmakers have argued, government regulation of corporate decision-making is an existential threat to our freedoms, then it must similarly be true that corporations must be free to make choices motivated by liberal or conservative values.
The whole point of the First Amendment is to prohibit the government from punishing viewpoints that clash with its political agenda. This protects both conservative and liberal corporations and
by Jordan Rubin | Feb 13, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The government’s serial lawbreaking in Donald Trump’s second term raises the recurring question: What are the consequences?
It’s an important question with a frequently unsatisfying answer — whether due to the law itself, the judges tasked with carrying it out, or some combination of the two.
But even if the prospect of personal accountability for Trump officials seems remote, sometimes there are remedies for clear rights violations, however belated and meager those remedies might be.
Take the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration illegally sent from the U.S. to El Salvador and, only after months of resistance, complied with a Maryland judge’s order to facilitate his return.
In the latest example of a judge recognizing that rights are only as good as their remedies, Washington’s chief federal trial judge cited Abrego’s case to justify an order for the government to facilitate the return of Venezuelans who were illegally sent to El Salvador in March under the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act.
While it’s unclear what will come of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order in practical terms, it stands out for its plain reiteration of the government’s lawlessness and the understanding that that lawlessness can’t go unnoticed, or unacted upon.
Boasberg, who is D.C.’s chief district judge, began his seven-page opinion and order by noting that he had previously found that the government denied due process to those Venezuelans when it deported them “in defiance of this Court’s Order.” The Obama-appointed judge reminds the reader that we’re talking about official lawbreaking from the beginning.
The most recent chapter of this long-running litigation stems from Boasberg telling the government to give him its plan for how it will provide belated due process to the people it deported without giving them
