“No One Gets Out of This Moment by Staying Silent” Inside the Liberal Legal Machine Confronting Trump 2.0 — And the High-Stakes Fight to Define Presidential Power

As Donald Trump’s second-term agenda accelerates, Democracy Forward and its fast-growing coalition of litigators are mounting an aggressive legal blockade — battling executive overreach, Supreme Court fast-tracking, and internal tensions on the left while reshaping the future of resistance lawyering.

At a discreet office suite just blocks from the White House, Skye Perryman stared into a bank of monitors as a dozen senior litigators dialed in. They were there for what has become a near-daily ritual: a strategy session to dissect the next round of emergency legal battles against the Trump administration.

As president again, Donald Trump has unleashed a sweeping wave of executive actions—from civil service purges to agency reorganizations to immigration crackdowns—at a speed that outpaces even his tumultuous first term. And Democracy Forward, the once-niche progressive legal advocacy group Perryman leads, is now positioning itself as the central operational headquarters for the legal resistance.

Midway through the meeting, the team received news they had been dreading: The administration had petitioned the Supreme Court for an emergency stay—again—this time to reverse a lower-court decision blocking the firing of the U.S. Copyright Office director. It was a reminder of the group’s two greatest adversaries: the pace of Trump’s agenda and a Supreme Court increasingly willing to greenlight it.

Welcome to the new legal battleground of Trump 2.0.

More Than 220 Judges Reject Trump Administration’s Mass Immigrant Detention Policy as Legal Backlash Surges Nationwide

Federal courts across 35 states — including more than 20 Trump-appointed judges — say the administration’s sweeping detention order likely violates due-process rights as emergency lawsuits skyrocket past 700 cases.

A rapidly expanding coalition of federal judges across the country — now totaling more than 220 — has formally rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to implement a sweeping new mass-detention policy aimed at immigrants in deportation proceedings. The wave of rulings represents one of the broadest and most bipartisan judicial rebukes of a federal immigration initiative in decades.

The rulings, which span over 700 emergency cases, increasingly highlight the judiciary’s frustration with what courts describe as an unlawful, unprecedented effort by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain nearly all noncitizens facing removal from the United States. And in a striking development, at least 23 of the judges opposing the policy were appointed by former President Donald Trump himself.

Hegseth Missing in Action: Pentagon Chief Under Fire as Ukraine Talks Advance Without Him

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—widely viewed by insiders as in over his head—skips critical Ukraine diplomacy while Army Secretary Dan Driscoll leads high-stakes talks with Kyiv and Moscow.

WASHINGTON | Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is nowhere to be found during the most consequential peace push of the Russia-Ukraine war. And for the White House, that absence is not a problem—it is the plan.

While senior national security officials shuttle between Kyiv, Abu Dhabi, and Brussels to hash out the framework for a potential ceasefire, Hegseth—the nation’s top defense official—is largely sidelined, absorbed instead in culture-war theatrics, MAGA-targeted messaging, and political score-settling that critics say confirm he is not qualified for the job.

Multiple current and former defense officials tell 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' Defense News that the Pentagon chief appears “in over his head,” “inept,” and “a political showpiece, not a defense secretary.” One called his tenure “a joke—dangerous at worst, embarrassing at best.”

And yet, this dynamic suits the Trump White House perfectly.

Europe Weighs the Unthinkable: NATO Eyes Offensive Options as Russian Hybrid Attacks Surge

Joint cyber strikes, rapid attribution teams, and surprise NATO drills move from taboo to table-stakes as Moscow escalates drone incursions, sabotage, and information warfare across the continent.

BRUSSELS | Europe is confronting a scenario that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago: retaliating directly against the Russian state.

With Moscow ramping up hybrid attacks—from drone incursions to railway sabotage—senior European officials and diplomats tell 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' Defense News that a once-taboo conversation is now taking shape inside NATO and EU capitals. The debate centers on whether the alliance should consider offensive cyber operations, coordinated attribution teams, and even “no-notice” NATO military exercises along Russia’s borders.

Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže summed up the emerging shift.

“The Russians are constantly testing the limits. A more proactive response is needed,” she said. “And it’s not talking that sends a signal — it’s doing.”

Coal’s Decline Stalled: Trump Rollbacks and AI Data Centers Push Aging Plants Back Into Overdrive

A sudden surge in electricity demand from AI supercomputing—and the Trump administration’s rapid rollback of pollution safeguards—is prompting states and utilities to postpone coal-plant retirements, reversing years of progress on U.S. air quality.

For more than a decade, America’s coal-fired power plants were marching steadily toward retirement. That decline—driven by cheaper natural gas, stricter pollution rules, and the rapid rise of renewables—produced steep drops in toxic emissions and helped stabilize the nation’s carbon output.

Now, that trend is reversing with unprecedented speed.

A potent combination of skyrocketing electricity demand from artificial intelligence data centers and a wave of regulatory rollbacks from the Trump administration is injecting new life into some of the country’s most polluting infrastructure. The result: coal plants that were slated to close years ago are suddenly being kept online well into the 2030s, and in many cases allowed to release more mercury, soot, and climate-warming gases than before.

Americans Face Intensifying Medical Debt Crisis as Charity Demand Surges Ahead of Major Medicaid and ACA Cuts

Nonprofit health foundations report unprecedented spikes in aid requests—months before federal subsidy expirations and Medicaid reductions threaten to widen care gaps nationwide.

Medical Debt Pressures Are Mounting—And Millions Could Soon Lose Coverage

Charities that help Americans pay for medical care say they are experiencing a dramatic increase in requests for financial assistance—an early warning sign of what public health experts fear could become one of the most significant medical-debt crises in years.

The surge comes before two major shocks scheduled for 2026:

• The expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, and
• Nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts were included in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Nonprofits warn that without congressional intervention, medical debt, delayed diagnoses, and preventable deaths could increase markedly.

“This is a national-scale alarm,” said Michael Sapienza, CEO of the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. “Our organization can’t handle much more demand.”

Lawmaker Presses Pentagon, DOJ, DHS, and FAA for Unified Plan to Counter Rising Drone Threats in U.S. Airspace

Rep. Gabe Vasquez warns that cartel, criminal, and unknown drone incursions demand an all-of-government counter-UAS strategy — not fragmented authorities.

A growing number of lawmakers and national security experts warn that the United States lacks a comprehensive, interagency strategy to protect American communities from increasingly sophisticated drone threats, as uncrewed systems proliferate across the homeland. This week, Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) escalated pressure on top federal officials to close that gap.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, Vasquez urged the administration to jointly craft “new, clear, and effective federal guidance” to counter illicit drone activity threatening public safety and national security.

“This is a national security issue, and I’m calling on the administration to give law enforcement the tools they need to keep our communities safe,” Vasquez told 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' Defense News.

IG Audit Finds Persistent Gaps in Pentagon Tracking of Contractor-Held Government Property

Watchdog warns ineffective remediation steps threaten DOD’s ability to produce accurate financial statements and meet its FY2028 audit goals.

A new watchdog audit warns that the Pentagon still lacks reliable accountability for government property in the possession of contractors (GPIPC) — a long-standing material weakness that jeopardizes accurate financial reporting and could slow the Defense Department’s path to a clean audit opinion.

The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DOD OIG) released a report-in-brief on Monday documenting significant shortcomings in the Pentagon’s efforts to fix its GPIPC tracking systems. The review evaluated the effectiveness of DOD’s corrective action plan to remediate its financial statement material weakness — and concluded that current actions are “ineffective.”

GPIPC includes government-owned equipment — from aircraft components to specialized tools — furnished to contractors or acquired by vendors under DOD contracts. These items remain federal assets even while used in commercial facilities.