April 29, 2025

Tuesday, April 29, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

Pope Francis’s funeral was on Saturday, with 250,000 people in attendance.

Some represented the United States.

Some represented the values good people worldwide share.

Zelenskyy was the only dignitary applauded.

Touch to watch.👇

Something says the Pope would have liked that too.

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Americans with Chutzpah.

Senator Booker and Leader Hakeem Jeffries held a sit-in on the Capitol Steps on Sunday.

They started at 6 am. People joined them all day long.

They want to stop the Republicans from passing Trump’s Death to Americans budget, which will slash Medicaid and other safety net monies, by the process called reconciliation which requires no Democratic votes.

We all should call Leader Jeffries and Senator Booker to thank them for highlighting what Congressional MAGA is doing. If your representative is MAGA red, call and protest.

From left, Hakeem Jeffries; Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; and Cory Booker, at the US Capitol on Sunday.

Touch the link in the tweet to watch. 👇

Law Students Track Firms That Have ‘Caved’ and ‘Stood Up’ to Trump

A group of law students from Georgetown University is indexing law firms’ responses to President Donald Trump’s orders to sanction legal practitioners he’s accused of engaging “in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation.” And publishing such information may be making it harder for the law firms that have caved to Trump’s demands to recruit new lawyers, the court-focused publication All Rise News reported Thursday.

That follows reporting from Politico earlier this month that showed that law students are eager to work for firms standing up to Trump.

The Georgetown students created a spreadsheet that categorizes more than 850 law firms into five groups: “Caved to Administration,” “Complying in Advance,” “Other Negative Action,” “Stood Up Against Administration’s Attacks” and “No Response.”

Since starting his second term in January, Trump has attempted to discredit, ignore and enact revenge upon lawyers and judges who have investigated or challenged him. He’s threatened to revoke some law firms’ security clearances, federal contracts and access to federal buildings if they don’t comply with his demands, which include eliminating any diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and providing the government free legal services for causes that “represent the full political spectrum, including Conservative ideals,” as Trump wrote in a social media post.

Some of the lawyers and firms Trump has targeted include Marc Elias, who represented Trump’s former political rival and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based firm that regularly represents members of the Democratic Party; and Paul, Weiss, which previously employed an attorney who investigated Trump’s finances.

While Perkins Coie is suing the Trump administration—a move some 500 other law firms have backed—nine of the nation’s top firms, including Paul, Weiss; Skadden Arps; and Willkie Farr & Gallagher, have already “caved” to Trump, according to the spreadsheet.

The list apparently matters to students and the firms, Mari Latibashvili, one of the organizers of the spreadsheet, told All Rise News: “Firms have been emailing us asking to be added to the tracker, have their designation changed, and/or have other edits made to their entries,” Latibashvili said, noting that the “Stood Up Against Administration’s Attacks” designation is the most desired.(Inside Higher Education)

Here is the spreadsheet. Here.

One more thing.

When you scroll through the law students’ spreadsheet and see those firms which have not responded, it might be better not to assume that these firms are secretly capitulating to Trump. If you move to the far right of the spreadsheet, you’ll see that many of these have not removed references to diversity (DEI) from their websites. It seems to me they are as likely to be quiet rebels as to be quiet capitulators.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker denounces Trump and inactive Democrats in New Hampshire.

Watch this clip. 👇

Or if you want, watch the full 29 minute speech by the Governor.👇

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The Super Bowl champion Quarterback said no to Trump.

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An aside.

The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee is resigning.

You may recall that AOC fought for this spot. House Dems voted 131-84 in a secret ballot vote to give the chair of Oversight to him over AOC in the fall.

Will she gain it now? Does she want it now?

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One more big thing.

Breaking News.

To make it worse, Carney is a Harvard grad (class of 1987) and, until he ran to be Canada’s Prime Minister, served on Harvard’s Broard of Overseers.

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