Dorf on Law

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump threatened to revoke Harvard's tax exempt status, posting on Truth Social: Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Put aside the absurd suggestion that Harvard is pushing "sickness" (in scare quotes even in Trump's original for no apparent reason) that is inspired by or in support of terrorism. What ground would Trump or his administration have for this action. In other words, . . . wait, can he actually do that? Professor Buchanan is the resident tax law expert here at Dorf on Law , but he is off this week. Ordinarily, I would just leave the issue for him to address when he returns next week, but given the pace of our stranger-than-fiction reality, by then we will no doubt have moved on to discussing an even more insane proposal from the Trump administration, like whether the president can, by execut...

[N.B.   My latest Verdict column,  Fighting the Last (Trade) War: Trump Ignores the Coming AI Revolution , was published yesterday. It explains that even in the unlikely event that President Trump's tariffs--or even more rational tariffs--boost U.S. domestic manufacturing, they will not lead to very substantial increases in domestic manufacturing employment, due to automation. Meanwhile, I describe how the prospect of imminent AGI (artificial general intelligence) would lead a responsible presidential administration to focus on preparing for an enormous resulting economic disruption. Trump's 19th-century version of industrial policy is thus extremely poorly suited to our times. I urge interested readers to click on the link above. For today's essay here, however, I turn to a different subject.] Harvard Had No Choice ( cross-posted in The Chronicle of Higher Education ) Harvard University's rejection of the Trump administration's April 11 demand letter (styled as a ...

The Trump regime has chosen defiance over compliance with the federal court order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the inhumane El Salvadoran prison to which he was mistakenly sent. Yesterday, during an Oval Office meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele, both stated that Abrego Garcia would not be coming back. There was no indication whatsoever that Trump had asked Bukele for Abrego Garcia's return and that Bukele had then said no. If that had happened, the DOJ could perhaps plausibly argue in court that it had done what it could to rectify its mistake but had failed. However, Trump appeared perfectly content with--and for all we know may have actively sought--Bukele's decision to keep Abrego Garcia. Meanwhile, Trump regime immigration hardliner Stephen Miller declared , without any evidence, that the regime had not made a mistake by sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in violation of a 2019 administrative judge's ruling forbi...

On Thursday night last week, after the Supreme Court issued its order in Noem v. Abrego Garcia  but before Judge Xinis responded by clarifying what exactly she expected of the Trump administration, I published a thread on BlueSky that, in retrospect, may have been too optimistic. Unrolled (that is to say, as a single text rather than multiple entries), here's what I wrote: I'm seeing a lot of criticism of the SCOTUS order in the Abrego Garcia case. Why, people ask, does the Court suggest that the district court may have exceeded its authority? I don't like the prospect of further delay, but I think the Court's order gets it about right. Let me explain. First, there doesn't need to be further delay. Judge Xinis could clarify her order in hours or even minutes. Second, SCOTUS is correct to suggest that a federal judge cannot order the executive to "effectuate" the return of a US citizen from a foreign sovereign if "effectuate" means "guarante...

On Wednesday night, the House of Representatives passed the No Rogue Rulings Act (NORRA) of 2025 on a party-line vote: 219 in favor and 213 against. All but one Republican voted for NORRA, and all Democrats voted against it. Below I'll further describe and analyze the bill, but first I want to say a word about the partisan nature of the vote. NORRA restricts the ability of federal district courts to issue what are sometimes called "nationwide" or "universal" injunctions. Such injunctions are controversial when issued against the government because a single district judge invalidates the action of either all of Congress or the executive branch, not just with respect to the party-plaintiff(s) but with respect to everyone. However, under ordinary rules of claim and issue preclusion, only parties to a case (or those in privity, i.e., some close relationship with a party) can benefit from a court judgment. To be sure, the modern approach allows some non-parties to b...

The current administration's economic advisors are truly fascinating, but in the worst possible way.  Notably, however, they were for the most part educated at elite institutions (horrors!) and would seem at least superficially to have expertise in the subjects on which they are working.  This makes them unlike many of the other political appointees in the executive branch, which has been filled with obviously unqualified charlatans and cranks -- think Health and Human Services, the FBI, Homeland Security, and so forth. Very much like their laughably ill-equipped colleagues, however, the top economists are cringe-inducingly willing to say and do anything to please the big boss, including things that are not even necessary to defend his bad decisions. I will get into some details momentarily, but this makes the economists more like the Marco Rubio types in the administration -- not exactly the same, however, because Rubio has never demonstrated any true expertise or insights o...

N.B.  Repeating its pattern of illegally cutting funds to universities without following ANY of the statutorily mandated steps, yesterday the Trump administration announced a "freeze" of $1 billion to Cornell and $790 million to Northwestern. Other than the fact that this particular iteration of the policy hits home for me, I have nothing new to say about it beyond what I've already written with respect to Columbia and other universities (e.g., here , here , and here ). Hence, I'll proceed on a different topic for today.  The following essay appeared originally  on  Balkinization   as part of its  Symposium on Legal Pathways Beyond  Dobbs . Enumerating a Post- Dobbs  Pathway For the foreseeable future, constitutional lawyers seeking progressive results from the federal courts will need to practice what  I have called  “ideological jujitsu—turning opponents’ strengths against them.” Nowhere is that more clear than in seeking to develop ar...

Four days after Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as U.S. president, I wrote an essay for this blog titled Wait, Can He Actually Do That? Part 1: Overview and TikTok Executive Order . In it, I explained that, given the number of actions of dubious legality by President Trump and his administration, I envisioned a roughly weekly (or even more frequent) series. I am sorry to say that I was right to worry. Since then, I have been adding entries to the series in response to some, but hardly all, of the Trump administration's efforts to undermine the rule of law. Meanwhile, some of my other writings and those of my co-bloggers not titled with the "Wait, Can He Actually Do That?" brand could also be included in the series. For simplicity, however, the running list below--which I'll update each time I write a new entry in the series--includes only those essays that I've formally designated as part of the series. As I've noted in various of the essays i...

Most readers are likely aware of the basic facts of the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the El Salvadoran man who was legally living in Maryland pursuant to a 2019 court order forbidding the government from deporting him to his home country, where, the court found, he would face persecution. The Trump administration has admitted that sending Abrego Garcia to a supermax prison in El Salvador known for human rights abuses was an "administrative error" but contends before the U.S. Supreme Court that there is nothing a federal court can do about that. As I shall explain, the Solicitor General's argument ultimately rests on the claim that the president who frequently boasts about his abilities as a deal maker is a lousy negotiator. Abrego Garcia has been wrongly imprisoned in El Salvador since March 15, when he was flown there by the United States. After a hearing on Friday of last week, Federal District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the government to effectuate Abrego Garc...

"Democrats, disaffected (and purged ) Republicans, and independents will get their feet under them as time goes by, so the current hand-wringing about the Democrats’ supposedly being adrift is ... inevitable but also will not be the story going forward."  Or so I wrote only six weeks ago on Verdict , in " More Reasons to be Guardedly Optimistic ," the second of two February columns in which I described " the inevitable end of Trumpism ."  Until last week, however, my prediction that Democrats' hand-wringing would soon end was looking particularly wrongheaded.  And then things changed, at least a bit. Last week's big political stories involving Democrats included welcome news regarding the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which turned out to be a romp by the liberal candidate.  That result was deservedly celebrated (especially because it was an " utter humiliation " of Elon Musk), and it was one of the few political situations in 2025 in...