The Trump administration is being sued by nearly half the U.S., with attorneys general in 23 states teaming up to file a lawsuit Tuesday over the president’s cancellation of $11 billion in “critical public health funding” that was doled out during the COVID-19 pandemic and kept in place by Congress.

“These termination notices … immediately triggered chaos for State and local health jurisdictions,” the group’s complaint alleges. “This funding provides essential support for a wide range of urgent public health needs such as identifying, tracking, and addressing infectious diseases; ensuring access to immunizations; fortifying emergency preparedness; providing mental health and substance abuse services; and modernizing critical public health infrastructure.”

A group of journalists has sued the Trump administration over its efforts to shut down the Voice of America news network and other federally-funded global media organizations.

The lawsuit, filed Friday, names Kari Lake – the stalwart Arizona political candidate, election denier, and Donald Trump ally — along with the agency she oversees, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which houses VOA, among the defendants. The plaintiffs allege that the administration’s massive cuts to the agency, which threaten thousands of jobs, violate their First Amendment free speech rights as well as the separation of powers, by taking a chain saw to an agency approved by Congress.

The VOA network — which is not broadcast within the U.S., but is heard by more than 350 million people worldwide each week — has long been on the president’s list of agencies to be targeted. In his March 15, 2025, executive order, Trump refers to the organization as “the voice of radical America” and asserts that under his watch, “taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”

The order then goes on to cite multiple right-wing media organizations, including the Daily Caller and The Washington Free Beacon, as proof of VOA’s alleged “radical” agenda.

The Trump administration has pushed through an “effective dismantling” of the Department of Education through massive layoffs, a lawsuit filed Thursday in Massachusetts federal court alleges.

On March 11, the agency announced a “nearly 50%” reduction in force (RIF) with a press release. Later that same day, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told The Hill those planned terminations were the “first step” toward the “total shutdown” of her entire department.

The plaintiffs, in their 53-page lawsuit, say the agency’s plans are “equivalent to incapacitating key, statutorily-mandated functions” that cause “immense damage” to the educational systems of several states. The complaint alleges the would-be federal firing spree is illegal — in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and federal law.

Moreover, the filing argues, the ongoing and upcoming reductions in staffing amount to an unlawful end-run around congressional authority in order to advance President Donald Trump’s stated goal of shuttering the department in de facto if not de jure terms.

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Law Firms

Judge cuts Quinn Emanuel’s $185M fee, an amount deemed ‘astronomical’ by objectors

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 14, 2024, 1:12 pm CDT

A federal judge has slashed a $185 million fee that she initially awarded to Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, an amount that translated to about $18,500 per hour for its work in an insurance class action lawsuit.

U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Kathryn C. Davis had initially awarded Quinn Emanuel 5% of a $3.7 billion judgment for about 10,000 hours of work. In an Oct. 10 opinion, she reduced the law firm’s claimed hours by 15% and reduced the award to 2.5% of the recovery, amounting to $92.4 million.

Davis reduced the award after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said she failed to properly conduct a “lodestar cross-check.” The cross-check considers hours worked, billing rates and a risk multiplier to compensate for the risk of no or reduced recovery.

Reuters and Law360 have stories.

Quinn Emanuel sought the attorney fee for suing on behalf of two classes of health insurers in litigation under the Affordable Care Act. The insurers said the federal government did not abide by its promise to pay them for losses incurred for the first three years of participation in the law’s insurance marketplace.

Health insurers who opposed the fee amount said it was “astronomical,” according to Reuters. They said Davis should award between $11.77 million and $23.14 million.

Davis said the amount requested by objecting insurers was “so low as to disincentivize attorneys from pursuing class actions.” She said Quinn Emanuel “pioneered” a “novel, winning legal theory” based on “an untested argument.”

After Quinn Emanuel sued, copycat suits followed. They led the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm Quinn Emanuel’s theory, Davis said. The novelty and complexity of Quinn Emanuel’s claim, along with the risk of nonpayment if the litigation didn’t succeed, justify a multiplier of 9.56, Davis said.

The multiplier is calculated by multiplying a firm’s hours by their rates. Davis used the reduced hours and Quinn Emanuel’s 2020 rates to calculate the multiplier.

Quinn Emanuel had obtained “judgment preservation insurance” on nearly $167 million of the $185 million fee award, Bloomberg Law reported in March. Typically, judgment preservation insurance is used to preserve a portion of large awards from being overturned on appeal.

The case is Health Republic Insurance Co. v. United States.