Hard Pass

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Everything the world’s briefly richest man built is failing at once.

The challenge is related to tariffs of between 10 and 12.5 percent imposed against 60 trading partners after probes by the USTR's office over allegations of forced labour

Days after returning to the White House in January 2025, the president signed Executive Order 14183, which banned transgender people from serving in the military, declaring that having a gender identity that does not align with one’s sex assigned at birth compromises the military’s ability to “establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.” The following May, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued Defense Department guidance on the voluntary and involuntary separation process for trans troops.

Earlier this summer, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 2–1 against the part of the ban that forces active duty service members out of the military. But the Supreme Court already ruled last year that the administration could implement the trans military ban while the several legal challenges work their way through the legal system.

Hegseth’s guidance allowed for trans service members to self-identify and voluntarily leave the military in order to remain eligible for their full range of benefits. As the Times notes, while many of the more than 4,000 trans service members who were serving opted to leave voluntarily, some chose to stay and fight their cases.

Hearings before separation boards consisting of a three-officer panel began in February, according to the Times, with the Pentagon implementing an unusual level of secrecy around them. The paper reports that the hearings take place behind closed doors on military bases, with no cameras allowed and no transcripts available. Some service members’ spouses have been banned from attending. Rashid, who has represented multiple clients at hearings on multiple bases, says at least six of the trans service members she’s represented have been banned from their own hearings because they refused to alter their appearance and wear a uniform that aligns with their sex assigned at birth.

Can you find Saddam Hussein?

An association of thousands of FBI agents and other groups are backing a lawsuit filed by three bureau employees who were fired last year for their roles in an investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election.

A legal brief by the FBI Agents Association is one of five filed by outside parties in the last week in support of the agents, who were terminated as part of a broader personnel purge by FBI Director Kash Patel that has targeted employees who investigated Trump or are perceived as being against the administration’s interest.

Taken together, the filings, including from former FBI and Justice Department alumni, underscore a concerted and bipartisan pushback to the waves of terminations that have roiled the FBI in the last year and a half as Patel has sought to remake the bureau in his own image.