2026-11-12T10:00:16.283Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
2020年大选后斯蒂芬·米勒离开白宫时，这名移民政策激进分子创立了一家新兴法律组织，意在将他针对左翼的“战争”搬到法庭上。他的这家“局外人”公司——“美国优先法律”（America First Legal，简称AFL）通过发起激进诉讼，推翻自由派的相关举措，试图打造出“让美国优先运动（MAGA）版的美国公民自由联盟”。
如今米勒重返白宫，先是担任特朗普总统的高级顾问，后又出任幕僚长，AFL也不再是局外人。
CNN的调查发现，特朗普政府的领导层与米勒创立的该组织之间存在非同寻常的重叠之处——这种暗中合作已对美国机构和联邦政策产生了巨大影响。
在此过程中，AFL已突破了倡导团体与白宫之间关联的伦理边界。
随着AFL的核心领导层陆续在特朗普政府中担任高级政府职位，或担任总统私人律师，该政府已在十多起AFL的诉讼中扮演了友好伙伴的角色——约占AFL在特朗普第二个任期内案件总量的40%。政府在AFL提起的案件中提交了支持性文件，解决了AFL针对联邦机构的诉讼，还应AFL的要求批准了对私人团体展开调查。
在一起非同寻常的案件中，一名向国务院提起诉讼的AFL律师，在案件得到对AFL有利的解决结果后，加入该机构担任首席律师。另一起案件中，美国司法部（DOJ）在AFL与得克萨斯州总检察长联名提交诉讼的当天，就达成了和解。
AFL与特朗普政府之间的诉讼协作已带来一系列重大法律成果。其中包括：取消对巴勒斯坦权力机构的援助、推翻全美各学区的性别认同相关政策、废除企业的多元化、公平与包容（DEI）规则，以及为协助移民和海关执法局（ICE）的警长们提供成功的法律辩护。
一些法律和伦理专家表示，虽然多届政府都与倡导团体保持着友好关系，但AFL与特朗普白宫之间的重叠程度远超常规。
“该组织与联邦政府立场的重叠程度似乎比其他倡导团体要高得多，”密歇根大学法学院法学教授莉娅·利特曼表示。
AFL发言人在给CNN的声明中称，白宫对其多起案件采取协作态度是因为“政治理念一致，而非因为AFL的某位相关人士”。该发言人称，“一个美国优先政府与一个名为‘美国优先法律’的组织有相似的优先事项和政策，这是理所当然的。”
AFL未就本文的详细问题作出回应，仅表示其员工及前员工均遵守所有规定，要求回避此前参与的案件、避免游说最近离开的机构。发言人表示：“所有相关人员都清楚自己的伦理和法律义务，并予以遵守。”
CNN的调查未发现有证据表明违反了关于公务回避或游说的相关规定。
特朗普还放弃了近三十年来每位总统都执行过的一项伦理承诺，该承诺禁止被任命者存在利益冲突。此外，他还撤销了拜登的一项行政命令，该命令本可进一步限制AFL领导层的行为。
米勒未回应置评请求。白宫发言人表示，米勒已不再隶属于AFL。
“真正的问题在于那些左翼非政府组织构成的数十亿美元网络，比如美国公民自由联盟，它们对特朗普政府发动了永无休止的法律战，”劳伦·比斯表示。“‘美国优先法律’为美国优先事业和客户提供无偿法律援助，这并非什么值得报道的新闻。”
在乔·拜登总统就职数周后，并非律师的米勒创立了AFL，称其“是人们长期期待的对抗美国公民自由联盟的对策”——这是一个“让美国优先运动”倡导团体，明确致力于在特朗普卸任期间利用法院推动他的施政目标。
米勒与另一名强硬派人士吉恩·汉密尔顿共同创立了该组织，汉密尔顿曾协助制定特朗普首届政府的家庭分离政策。该组织起步时资金和人员都很少，但董事会成员均为知名的特朗普亲信。
AFL起步缓慢，第一年仅筹得630万美元捐款，提起了约十起案件。不过它很快就取得了对抗拜登白宫的惊人胜利，包括叫停一项将白人餐厅经营者置于疫情救济队末尾的政策，以及废除一项将白人农民排除在外的贷款减免计划。
AFL依托早期的这些成功，在性别认同和DEI政策等文化战争议题上，向各学区、州政府、企业和大学发起挑战。
这些挑战大多以失败告终。AFL在2022年输掉了大量案件，包括多起关于跨性别学生学校政策的案件。
但在米勒高调宣传的推动下，AFL的筹款额猛增。根据最新公开的税务记录，2024年它筹集了3200万美元。这使得该公司的年收入超过了大多数其他右翼法律倡导团体。
在拜登剩余任期内，该组织继续对拜登政府构成威胁——就联邦疫苗强制令、亨特·拜登找回的笔记本电脑，以及将“性别认同”纳入Title IX保护范围等问题提起诉讼。
然而，当特朗普赢得第二个任期后，米勒和他共同创立的这家组织迅速从令白宫头疼的局外人，转变为真正的内部人士。
去年就职日当天，米勒离开AFL，出任特朗普的副幕僚长，成为组织特朗普大规模驱逐计划最具影响力的工作人员。时任AFL执行董事的汉密尔顿紧随其后，出任白宫副法律顾问一职。
这标志着这家小型公司的领导层与白宫之间出现了引人注目的重叠时期。与此同时，特朗普没有签署自小布什以来每位总统都签署的一项伦理承诺，该承诺一般要求联邦雇员承诺避免利益冲突，并限制离职后与工作相关的就业。他还撤销了前总统拜登的行政命令，该命令强化了禁止政府雇员从事与此前或未来私营部门工作相关事务的规定。
AFL的其他核心领导层也很快追随米勒，包括汉密尔顿在AFL的副手里德·鲁宾斯坦，他出任了国务院首席律师。AFL副总裁丹尼尔·爱泼斯坦留在AFL的同时，还担任了特朗普的私人律师。还有一些低级别AFL员工加入了政府，包括至少两名加入美国司法部的律师。
有一起案件中，一名AFL领导人在其提起的诉讼仍在待审之际，就加入了特朗普政府，并担任他所加入机构的首席律师。
当鲁宾斯坦前往国务院时，该机构仍在应对他两年多前在AFL期间提起的一起案件，该案旨在阻止可能惠及巴勒斯坦权力机构的人道主义资金投入。不到一年后，国务院让步了。该机构同意遵守特朗普在2018年签署的一项法律，即切断对约旦河西岸和加沙的财政援助，这些援助原本惠及巴勒斯坦权力机构，除非该机构停止向被以色列当局杀害、受伤或监禁的巴勒斯坦人，包括实施恐怖行为的巴勒斯坦人的家属发放款项。
国务院发言人告诉CNN，鲁宾斯坦已正式回避该案。
CNN发现，在汉密尔顿担任特朗普政府高级律师期间，AFL与白宫至少在四起案件中开展了合作。
汉密尔顿担任白宫副法律顾问的具体职责尚未公开。但在私营部门，他深度参与了与美国司法部相关的项目，包括为传统基金会发布的特朗普第二届政府保守派蓝图《2025计划》撰写美国司法部章节。
在汉密尔顿任职白宫期间，政府对AFL曾投诉过的五所学区展开了调查，支持AFL为与移民和海关执法局合作的警长辩护，并就AFL起诉的加州性别认同学校政策启动了联邦调查。
在美国司法部针对获得联邦资金且实行DEI政策的公司展开打击行动时，其首个目标是国际商业机器公司（IBM）——该公司此前因针对白人的歧视行为被AFL在拜登政府期间提起过两次诉讼。
汉密尔顿在担任白宫职务五个月后，于2025年6月返回AFL出任总裁。他回归后不久，AFL提起了第三起挑战IBM DEI政策的诉讼；福克斯新闻关于该案的报道引用了汉密尔顿的言论。不到一年后，美国司法部宣布对IBM处以1700万美元罚款，理由是其“非法DEI行为”。
联邦法律禁止汉密尔顿在今年夏天的回避期结束前，作为AFL领导人影响白宫，也禁止他在AFL参与任何他曾在政府中直接处理过的事务。
AFL表示，汉密尔顿在白宫以及返回该法律组织后，均遵守了所有这些规定。
但CNN发现，AFL和汉密尔顿均未披露与其白宫职务相关的一个关键细节。
尽管在伦理文件中表示汉密尔顿于2025年1月结束了在AFL的工作，但AFL在哥伦比亚特区的公司文件仍持续将汉密尔顿列为担任正式职务。2024年2月提交的文件将汉密尔顿列为唯一的“授权人士”，而2026年1月提交的文件则显示他为该非营利组织唯一的公开“实益拥有人”。
据哥伦比亚特区许可和消费者保护局的发言人称，这些文件每两年提交一次，但若领导层发生变动则应更新。该发言人证实，AFL未提交其他任何记录。
AFL发言人在给CNN的声明中表示，该组织认为只需每两年在哥伦比亚特区提交一次文件，且这些表格上列出的头衔与他在该组织的实际职务并不对应。
“汉密尔顿从未拥有，也并未拥有‘美国优先法律’，”该发言人表示。“此外，他与‘美国优先法律’没有任何正式协议，约定在政府服务结束后返回。”
鲁宾斯坦在特朗普政府任职一年后也已返回AFL，担任该组织的高级副总裁。
该公司尚未提交2025年高管薪酬的税务记录。根据税务记录，2024年汉密尔顿从AFL获得了超过60万美元。米勒同年从AFL获得了超过50万美元。
即使是一名未加入政府的AFL领导人，也协助特朗普处理了一些最具争议的法律事务。爱泼斯坦作为特朗普的私人律师，与美国国税局达成了一项和解协议，将设立近18亿美元的基金，用于赔偿那些特朗普声称遭受政府不公对待的人。
批评者抨击该基金是特朗普收买盟友的手段，最终在共和党压力下被撤销。与此同时，一名联邦法官因爱泼斯坦在和解协议中的角色对其实施制裁，法官认为该协议是串通的，“在法律和事实上没有可行的依据”。
爱泼斯坦现在被禁止在其居住的佛罗里达州南区联邦法院出庭一年，他同时担任佛罗里达国际大学法学院临时院长。一家联邦上诉法院最近拒绝了他暂停制裁的请求。
由于爱泼斯坦为特朗普私人工作，而非在特朗普白宫任职，他不受汉密尔顿、鲁宾斯坦和米勒所受的同等伦理规则约束。
根据他领英账号的信息，爱泼斯坦于8月离开AFL，未回应本文的置评请求。
特朗普第二个任期开始后不久，AFL（约有10名全职律师，而美国公民自由联盟有500名）借助政府的支持，开始发挥远超其规模的影响力。
2025年2月3日，AFL向教育部投诉弗吉尼亚州的五所学区，这些学区允许学生使用与自己性别认同相符的卫生间和更衣室。仅仅11天后，教育部就启动了调查——专家表示，这一反应异常迅速。最终结论是，所有五所学区确实违反了联邦民权法。
当AFL就类似政策起诉其中一个学区时，美国司法部试图提交支持动议，但遭到法官阻止。该案于2月达成和解。
随后很快取得了更重大的胜利——通常都有白宫的协助。
2025年上半年，AFL针对四项实行DEI政策的大型机构提起诉讼——国际商业机器公司（IBM）、哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）、得克萨斯理工大学和俄亥俄北方大学——在面临取消相关规则的新联邦压力下，经过长期法律斗争后均选择让步。
6月在得克萨斯州，AFL与得克萨斯州总检察长肯·帕克斯顿合作，挑战拜登时期的一项规定，该规定允许移民法官为有资格申请合法身份的无证移民撤销驱逐案件——根据CNN获得的一份内部备忘录显示，美国司法部已邀请AFL提起诉讼，且不会在法庭上为该规定辩护。
诉讼提交当天，美国司法部就达成了合意判决。AFL迅速庆祝胜利，称该判决终结了一项非法的“秘密特赦计划”。
法律观察人士表示，这种诉讼在司法实践中并不常见。
“这根本算不上诉讼，”美国公民自由联盟副法律主任本·维兹纳表示。“不存在案件或争议。”
巴尔的摩、俄亥俄州哥伦布市和康涅狄格州纽黑文市的代理律师也表示反对，称这是串通的，将导致缴纳城市税款者被驱逐的情况增加。“得克萨斯州甚至无需送达诉讼状，”律师们在要求干预的紧急动议中称。“美国司法部已经等不及了。”
美国司法部新闻办公室未回应CNN关于该案的提问。
AFL在特朗普任命大法官的最高法院帮助下，还取得了其他几项引人注目的胜利。
今年春天，最高法院以6票赞成3票反对的保守派多数票，推翻了禁止学校向父母披露学生性取向或性别认同的相关规定；AFL赢得了针对两个民主党州的两起案件的上诉。
今年夏天，最高法院同意审理一起案件，该案中AFL在下级法院两次败诉，试图挑战华盛顿州的一项法律，该法律允许未成年人在未经父母同意的情况下接受性别认同治疗。
专家告诉CNN，特朗普政府并非与友好法律倡导团体合作以实现自身政策目标的首创者。
奥巴马和拜登政府的白宫都曾与环保组织达成和解，并支持左翼团体提起的案件。不过，两者都曾在公民自由联盟或塞拉俱乐部等友好团体挑战政府政策时，对其展开激烈抗争。
其他右翼法律倡导团体实际上也曾对特朗普提起诉讼。去年，新公民自由联盟和自由正义中心分别就关税问题起诉政府，最高法院作出了有利于它们的裁决。
AFL几乎从未与特朗普政府产生过分歧。
但专家和监督组织最担心的，是特朗普政府对伦理规则的放宽，以及AFL与政府的密切关联。
“公民与道德组织”（CREW）的高级伦理顾问辛西娅·布朗表示，如果外界普遍接受“外部团体与总统政府结成紧密合作伙伴关系，动用政府全力对抗‘针对其的不良组织’”这种新模式，所有美国公民都应感到担忧。
“这是少数服从多数，剥夺了少数人的权利，”她指的是美国民主的核心原则。“确保所有公民都受到公平对待，维护司法系统的公信力，这样无论领导人是否是我们选举产生的，我们都能相信司法系统是为了我们的利益而运作，这一点非常重要。”
Stephen Miller’s ‘answer to the ACLU’ is quietly reshaping policy — with the White House’s help
2026-11-12T10:00:16.283Z / CNN
When he left the White House after the 2020 election, immigration firebrand Stephen Miller founded an upstart legal group to take his war against the left to the courts. His outsider firm, America First Legal, sued aggressively to overturn liberal initiatives in his quest to create MAGA’s answer to the ACLU.
With Miller now back in the White House, first as a top adviser to President Trump and now as his chief of staff, AFL isn’t an outsider any longer.
A CNN investigation has found an extraordinary overlap between leadership and policy from Trump’s administration and the group founded by Miller – a quiet collaboration that has made an outsized mark on American institutions and federal policies.
In the process, AFL has pushed the ethical boundaries of the ties between an advocacy group and the White House.
As AFL’s top leaders have taken senior government jobs under Trump or worked as the president’s personal attorney, the administration has acted as a friendly partner in more than a dozen AFL lawsuits – roughly 40% of AFL’s caseload in Trump’s second term. The administration has filed supportive documents in cases brought by AFL,settled AFL cases against federal agencies, and granted requests for probes into private groups at AFL’s request.
In one extraordinary case, an AFL attorney who filed a lawsuit against the State Department later joined the agency as its top attorney before it resolved the case favorably for AFL. In another, the Department of Justice reached a settlement with AFL and Texas’s attorney general on the very same day their complaint was filed in court.
The litigation coordination between AFL and the Trump administration has led to significant legal outcomes. These include the cancellation of aid to the Palestinian Authority, reversal of gender identity policies at school districts around the country, the stripping away of corporate DEI rules and the successful legal defense of sheriffs who helped Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
While many administrations have had friendly relationships with advocacy groups, the overlap between AFL and Trump’s White House far exceeds the norm, some legal and ethics experts said.
“The extent of the overlap between this organization and the federal government’s position seems significantly higher” than with other advocacy groups,said Leah Litman, a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School.
In a statement to CNN, an AFL spokesperson said that shared politics explain the White House’s collaborative approach to many of its cases – “not because of who at AFL was involved.” The spokesperson added that it stands to reason that“an America First administration has similar priorities and policies to an organization called America First Legal.”
AFL did not respond to detailed questions for this story, but said that its employees followed all rules requiring staffers and former staffers to recuse from cases they previously worked on and to avoid lobbying agencies they’ve recently left. The spokesperson said “everyone involved understood their ethical and legal obligations and complied with them.”
CNN’s investigation found no evidence that those regulations regarding official recusals or lobbying were broken.
Trump has also ditched an ethics pledge nearly every president enforced for the past 30 years, which bans banning appointees from conflicts of interest. And he rescinded a Biden executive order that could have further restricted the actions of AFL’s leaders.
Miller did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokeswoman said Miller is no longer affiliated with AFL.
“The real story is the multibillion-dollar network of leftist NGOs, like the ACLU, that have waged unrelenting lawfare against the Trump Administration,” said Lauren Bis. “It’s not newsworthy that ‘America First Legal’ is providing pro bono support to America First causes and clients.”
Weeks after President Joe Biden took office, Miller, who is not a lawyer, launched AFL, calling it “the long-awaited answer to the ACLU” – a MAGA advocacy group that explicitly aimed to use the courts to advance Trump’s priorities while he was out of office.
Miller co-founded the group with Gene Hamilton, another hardliner who had helped craft the first Trump administration’s family separation policy. The group started with little money or staff, but a board of well-known Trump acolytes.
AFL started slowly, raising $6.3 million in donations in its first year, and filing about a dozen cases. But it soon notched impressive wins against Biden’s White House, including halting a policy that put White restaurant owners at the back of the line for pandemic relief and killing a loan forgiveness program that excluded White farmers.
AFL built on that early success by taking on school districts, state governments, corporations and universities on culture war issues like gender identity and DEI policies.
Many of those challenges failed. AFL lost a slew of cases in 2022, including many over transgender policies in schools.
But AFL’s fundraising soared, driven by Miller’s high-profile advocacy.In 2024, it pulled in $32 million, according to the latest publicly available tax records. That catapulted the firm past the annual revenues for most other rightwing legal advocacy groups.
The group continued to be a thorn in the Biden administration’s side through the end of his term – suing over the federal vaccine mandate, Hunter Biden’s recovered laptop, and the expansion of Title IX protections to include “gender identity.”
When Trump won a second term,though, both Miller and the group he co-founded quickly shifted from nettlesome DC outsiders to ultimate insiders.
On Inauguration Day last year, Miller left AFL to become Trump’s deputy chief of staff, and the most influential staffer in organizing Trump’s mass deportation plans.Hamilton, then AFL’s executive director, followed suit, taking a job as deputy White House counsel.
This kicked off a striking period of overlap between the small firm’s leadership and the White House. At the same time, Trump skipped an ethics pledge signed by every president since George W. Bush that generally required federal employees to promise to avoid conflicts of interest and to refrain from post-government employment connected to their work. He also rescinded former President Biden’s executive order strengthening bans on government employees working on matters related to previous or future private-sector work.
Other top AFL leaders soon followed Miller, including Hamilton’s No. 2 at AFL, Reed Rubinstein, who became the top lawyer in the State Department. AFL vice president Daniel Epstein stayed at AFL – but also signed on as a personal attorney to Trump.A number of lower-ranking AFL staffers joined the administration, including at least two attorneys who took DOJ jobs.
In one case, an AFL leader took a job in the Trump administration while a lawsuit he’d filed was still ongoing against the very agency he was joining as its top attorney.
When Rubinstein jumped to the State Department, the agency was still battling a case he had filed more than two years earlier at AFL, seeking to block humanitarian funding that could benefit the Palestinian Authority. Less than a year later, the State Department gave in. The agency agreed to abide by a 2018 law signed by Trump to cut financial aid to the West Bank and Gaza that benefited the Palestinian Authority until it stopped sending payments to families of Palestinians killed, injured or imprisoned by Israeli authorities, including those who carried out acts of terror.
A State Department spokesman told CNN that Rubinstein formally recused himself from the case.
AFL and the White House appeared to cooperate on at least four cases while Hamilton worked as a top attorney under Trump, CNN found.
Hamilton’s specific duties as deputy White House counsel aren’t public. But in the private sector, he worked deeply on DOJ-related projects, including authoring the DOJ chapter for Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump term published by the Heritage Foundation.
During Hamilton’s White House tenure, the administration launched probes into five school districts that AFL had lodged complaints about,supported sheriffs defended by AFL for working with ICE, and opened a federal investigation into a California law about gender identity school policies as AFL sued over the same policy.
As DOJ also cracked down on companies with DEI policies getting federal funds, the agency’s first target was IBM – a company Hamilton’s firm had twice sued during the Biden administration for anti-White discrimination.
Hamilton left his White House position after five months, returning to AFL as its president in June 2025. Shortly after his return, AFL brought a third suit challenging DEI policies at IBM; Hamilton was quoted in a Fox News story about the case. Less than a year later, the DOJ announced the penalty against IBM: $17 million for its “illegal DEI practices.”
Federal law barred Hamilton from seeking to influence the White House as AFL’s leader before a cooling-off period expired this summer, or to ever work on any matters at AFL that he directly worked on in the administration.
AFL said Hamilton followed all those rules in his official role at the White House – and since returning to the legal group.
But both AFL and Hamilton failed to address one key detail related to his White House job, CNN found.
Despite indicating in ethics documents that he ended his AFL job in January 2025, AFL’s DC corporate filings effectively continued to identify Hamilton holding a formal role. Its February 2024 filing listed Hamilton as the only “Authorized Person” and a January 2026 filing listed him as the nonprofit’s sole disclosed “beneficial owner.”
The filings are required every two years, but are supposed to be updated if there are changes in leadership, according to a spokesperson for the DC Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection. The spokesperson confirmed no other records were filed by AFL.
An AFL spokesperson said in a statement to CNN that the group believed it only had to file paperwork with DC every two years and that the titles listed on those forms did not correspond to his actual role with the group.
“Hamilton does not, nor did he, own America First Legal,” the spokesperson said. “Moreover, he had no formal agreement with America First Legal to return after his government service ended.”
Rubinstein, too, has now returned to AFL – as its senior vice president – after his yearlong stint in the Trump administration.
The firm has yet to file tax records showing which executives received compensation in 2025. In 2024, Hamilton earned more than $600,000 from AFL, according to tax records. Miller made more than $500,000 from AFL that same year.
Even one AFL leader who didn’t join the administration has helped Trump with some of his most contentious legal efforts. Epstein, in his role as Trump’s personal attorney, signed a settlement with the IRS that would have created a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate those Trump said were unfairly targeted by the government.
Critics pounced on the fund as a way for Trump to pay off his allies, and it was scuttled under Republican pressure. Epstein, meanwhile, was sanctioned by a federal judge for his role in the settlement, which the judge found was collusive and “had no viable basis in law or fact.”
He’s barred now for a year from appearing in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, where he lives and serves as interim dean of the Florida International University College of Law. A federal appeals court recently denied his request to pause the sanction.
Because Epstein works for Trump personally, and not in the Trump White House, he is not subject to the same ethics rules by which Hamilton, Rubinstein and Miller are bound.
Epstein, who left AFL in August according to his LinkedIn account, did not respond to requests to comment for this story.
Soon after Trump’s second term began, AFL, which employs about 10 staff attorneys compared to the ACLU’s 500, began punching far above its weight – with help from the administration.
On February 3, 2025, AFL sent a complaint to the Department of Education about five Virginia school districts that allowed students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. Just 11 days later, the department opened a probe – an unusually swift response, experts said. It concluded that all five districts had indeed violated the federal civil rights law.
When AFL sued one of those districts over similar policies, the DOJ attempted to file a motion of support, though it was blocked by a judge. The case was settled in February.
More significant victories soon followed – often with an assist from the White House.
In the first half of 2025, four large organizations targeted by AFL for DEI policies – IBM, CBS Broadcasting, Texas Tech and Ohio Northern University – capitulated after prolonged legal fights as they faced new federal pressure to drop the rules.
In Texas in June, the AFL teamed up with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to challenge a Biden-era rule that allowed immigration judges to close deportation cases for undocumented immigrants who were eligible to apply for legal status – a suit the DOJ had invited via an internal memo, obtained by CNN, that said it would not defend the rule in court.
The DOJ then agreed to a consent judgment on the same day the suit was filed. AFL swiftly celebrated the win, saying it killed an illegal “backdoor amnesty program.”
Legal observers said the same-day suit was not a typical use of the courts.
“That’s not really litigation,” said Ben Wizner, a deputy legal director at the ACLU. “There’s no case or controversy.”
Attorneys representing the cities of Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and New Haven, Connecticut, also objected, calling it collusive and saying it would trigger a rise in deportations of people who pay city taxes. “Texas did not even have to serve its lawsuit,” the attorneys said in their emergency motion to intervene. “DOJ was ready and waiting.”
The DOJ’s press office did not respond to CNN’s questions about the case.
AFL has had several other notable wins with aid from a Supreme Court stocked with Trump’s picks.
After a 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court ruling this spring revived challenges against laws forbidding schools from disclosing students’ sexual orientation or gender identities to parents,AFL won appeals in two cases against Democratic states.
And this summer, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that AFL had lost twice in the lower courts seeking to challenge a Washington law that could allow minors to receive gender identity care without their parents’ consent.
The Trump administration didn’t invent the concept of working with sympathetic legal advocacy groups to achieve its own policy goals, experts told CNN.
Both the Obama and Biden White Houses settled with environmental groups and supported cases brought by left-leaning groups. However, both also aggressively fought at-times friendly groups like the ACLU or Sierra Club when they challenged administration policies.
Other right-leaning legal advocacy groups have actually taken on Trump. Last year, New Civil Liberties Alliance and the Liberty Justice Center separately sued the administration over tariffs, with the Supreme Court ruling in their favor.
AFL rarely if ever genuinely breaks ranks with the Trump administration.
But it is the Trump administration’s softening of ethics rules– and the AFL’s close ties to the administration – that most concerns experts and watchdog groups.
Cynthia Brown, a senior ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said all Americans should be concerned if the new norm is for outside groups and presidential administrations to operate as partners in lock step using the full weight of government against organizations “on their bad side.”
“It’s majority rule with rights for the minority,” she said, referring to a core tenet of American democracy. “It’s important to make sure that we’re treating all citizens fairly and keeping the justice system’s integrity, so that we can all trust that it’s working in our interest regardless of whether the leadership is who we voted for.”
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