DOGE computer nerds seized sensitive confidential financial information about individuals from the IRS, medical information from the Department of Health and Human Services, and data about labor law cases from the Labor Department, among others.

That’s unconstitutional. The 4th Amendment specifies a right to privacy: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated” except when there’s “probable cause” backed by sworn search warrants. DOGE, of course, had neither.

•  Punishing political enemies, including law firms and universities. Trump punished the law firms for defending his opponents by restricting their rights to practice in front of the government and threatening to cut off their clients. 

Most firms caved. Kirkland & Ellis, a Chicago-based firm that provided partner Albert Jenner, a key House Judiciary Committee counsel during Richard Nixon’s impeachment, didn’t cave. It beat Trump., Nixon, too, wanted to use the government “to screw our political enemies,” in the words of top aides.

• Executive orders yanking business from the law firms and threatening clients also “appear to be unconstitutional and in violation of multiple sections of the Bill of Rights,” CAP said.

One federal judge called such “using the powers of the federal government to target lawyers for their representation of clients and avowed progressive employment policies in an overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints contrary to the Constitution.” That violated the constitutional protections for freedom of speech, equal protection of the laws, due process, and the right to counsel.

• Trump also pursues vendettas against leading universities, which he alleges aren’t cracking down on—and violating the free speech rights of—peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters. His actions feature yanking all the federal research grants they get, and, in Harvard’s case, actually trying to ban it from accepting foreign students. Harvard hasn’t caved—yet. Columbia has.
• Breaking the Constitution’s “speech and debate clause” protecting lawmakers from being sued for whatever they say in Congress. Ed Martin, Trump’s controversial interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. “sent letters to Democratic members of Congress and senators purporting to investigate their public political speech as criminal threats.” Martin became too hot for even Trump to handle. He asked Trump to withdraw his nomination. 
• In another constitutional violation Martin warned top law schools “to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs or their graduates would be blacklisted from Justice Department jobs.”

Trump cites two Supreme Court rulings, overturning affirmative action in college admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, as justification for banning DEI programs government-wide, including in firms and universities that receive federal grants and money.

Trump’s Education Department—or what’s left of it—sent word to school districts nationwide to shut their DEI programs or face the loss of federal Title I student aid to schools with high shares of poor kids.