• Brenna Frey resigned from Skadden after the firm inked a deal with the Trump administration.
• It marks another public resignation from the firm. Rachel Cohen did the same.
• The firm said it would provide $100M in pro bono work to causes supported by the administration.

After President Donald Trump announced a deal with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom on Friday, Brenna Frey decided she had had enough.

Frey, an associate at the firm's Washington, DC office who said she has worked in Big Law for over a decade, told Business Insider on Sunday it was a "dealbreaker" for her that Skadden chose to preemptively reach an agreement with the administration to avoid punitive executive actions similar to those taken against other law firms like Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie, and WilmerHale, among others.

In recent weeks, Trump has targeted several Big Law firms with executive actions that strip their lawyers of security clearances and order reviews of their government contracts. Some firms, like Jenner & Block and WilmerHale, have fought the orders in court, while others, like Paul Weiss and Skadden, have chosen to sign agreements to avoid the legal headache.

"The deal was announced, and that was it for me," Frey said, noting that she was "absolutely not considering leaving" prior to Skadden's decision to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services to causes that Trump supports. The firm also promised it would not "engage in illegal DEI discrimination," according to a copy of the agreement that Trump posted on Truth Social.

In her resignation announcement posted on LinkedIn, Frey called Skadden's deal with Trump "a craven attempt to sacrifice the rule of law for self-preservation."

She told BI she wanted to make her resignation public to signal solidarity with those disappointed or angered by the agreement.

"I know there are people still at the firm who can't leave for whatever reason, financial reasons, needing to pay back law school loans, the breadwinner for their family," she said. "I knew that those people can't speak out, so because I was able to, I felt it was important to make that public."

In her LinkedIn post, Frey quoted Rachel Cohen, another former Skadden associate who resigned earlier this month in a firm-wide email. Frey said she also tried to send her resignation to all of Skadden's US firms but found the distribution lists disabled.

Two other Skadden associates told BI that they, too, had tried to send firm-wide emails seeking more information about the deal but found that access to the internal distribution lists had been blocked after Cohen's resignation.

In her March 20 resignation email to Skadden that she posted on LinkedIn, Cohen said the current situation was not normal. She also circulated an open letter among hundreds of associates at Big Law firms calling on their employers to take a stronger stand against Trump's executive orders.

Cohen, who worked at the firm's Chicago office, wrote a response to Frey's LinkedIn post on Friday, complimenting her decision to "stand for the rule of law."

"Brenna—you and many others are the reason that I will never be ashamed to say I worked at Skadden Arps, despite leadership's determination to try to ruin the firm's name," Cohen wrote.

Frey said she's gotten support from some associates within Skadden, as well as from people outside the firm.

"With respect to Big Law more generally, I'm grateful that the world is watching, that clients are watching," she said. "There are examples of firms out there who have successfully fought back."

While firms like Skadden and Paul Weiss have inked deals with the president, drawing ire from many within the industry, other firms have chosen to sue in response to Trump's executive orders.

Jenner & Block and WilmerHale are two of those firms. In both cases, judges approved temporary restraining orders to halt Trump's executive actions. The judges in both cases expressed concern that the targeted actions threatened the rule of law.

"I hope that they look to the firms who have fought back about against this infringement on the rule of law, rather than the firms who have chosen to acquiesce to the Trump administration's demands," Frey said.

• Indu Navar has spent her career in tech, building and investing in organizations in Silicon Valley.
• She founded the Peter Cohen Foundation and EverythingALS after her husband died of ALS.
• Cohen had a long tech career, too. He built Amazon Mechanical Turk and AWS at Amazon.

This is an As-Told-To essay based on a conversation with Indu Navar, the CEO and Founder of EverythingALS. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Both my husband and I have been on the ground floor building technology that changed the world.

I have degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. I started my career at NASA and was on the founding team of what is today's WebMD. Then, I started another company that I ran for 14 years. After that, I was investing and advising. I've always been fascinated with big data and building analytics on top of it. My husband, Peter Cohen, worked at Amazon for about 18 years. He joined around 1996 or 1997 and built Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowd-sourcing marketplace.

Life was really good. Here we are making change. He was still in his late forties, and then he started saying, "Hey, I think something is wrong with my ankle. It's not dorsal flexing."

We're like, "Oh, no big deal, it's just an ankle issue." No, it was a spine issue. Oh no, it was a brain issue. It took us two years to figure out that it was actually ALS, which is degenerative. The method of diagnosing ALS is called elimination, so you eliminate other diseases and problems. I think we spent over $100,000 just to diagnose it.

Every 90 minutes, somebody is getting diagnosed with ALS, and they're hearing the same diagnosis they heard 80 years ago. You have 2 to 5 years to live from your first symptom. That's what shocked me. It takes a long time to get diagnosed, and we diagnose late compared to other diseases, like cancer. A lot of people pass away without even being diagnosed.

Peter was diagnosed in 2018 and passed away in 2019. It shook us. It shook us in a way that, as entrepreneurs and as problem solvers, we ask how this is in such a dire state where we haven't done something about it in 80 years? This problem is very opaque until you've gone through it.

I started a nonprofit in his name called the Peter Cohen Foundation. My goal is to be able to say that he helped cure ALS with what he went through. We used to talk all the time about what we would do differently if we knew this problem existed before it happened to us.

Our goal with the Peter Cohen Foundation and EverythingALS is to bring technology innovations to ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases. We do everything from monitoring and assessing what is happening in clinical trials and using sensors to predict what will happen. The sensors measure patients' speech, breathing, walking, and fine motor skills.

Today, we don't actually have the tools to figure out if the drug you give a patient is really working because the way they evaluate your deterioration is by asking you, "On a scale of 1 to 4, how is your speech? How is your walking? How easy is it for you to cut your food?" For us, we're vegetarians. We don't cut our food, so how would we know how to answer that? It's called a patient-reported outcome, and a lot of the questioning has not evolved in years.

By using sensors, we don't have to wait for you to get to the point where you can't do things. We can actually predict where you're going to be in 3, 6, 9, or 12 months. We'll use them for early diagnosis. We've digitized a lot, and our algorithm is in clinical trials.

We call it citizen-driven research because we go directly to patients and do research with people who are being affected by the disease, so we can get thousands of people involved. We send the sensors to them, they wear them, and we monitor them remotely.

We have an EverythingALS app that lets patients talk to others who have ALS and have gone through this journey. They can also talk to our LLM-based generative AI tool, but it's not like talking to ChatGPT. Our AI is really walled off and trained only with the data we have and the 220 hours of experts who have spoken to us. It's a very trusted dataset.

Right now, we are moving to applying our process to our first other disease, which is Alzheimer's. Huntington's and Parkinson's will be in the near future as well. Our goal is to move the needle and fill the gap. We just felt like there was an unmet need in terms of how we care for people, and if you don't care for people, you'll never come up with a cure.

• The concept of universal basic income has a long history.
• Figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Nixon supported versions of UBI.
• Now, the US and other countries have experimented with active basic income programs.

Over the last few years, as average Americans have wrestled with a growing wealth gap and rising prices, policymakers have been tossing around an audacious idea: What if we just give people money to help them?

The concept of a universal basic income is pretty simple. To help support a population, the government gives it no-strings-attached funds to bolster their finances.

Despite vigorous debate over UBI, some American cities and counties are now experimenting with guaranteed basic income, a pared-down version of UBI in which a subset of the population receives funds for a limited time period, usually about 12 to 18 months.

In the cities and US states that have tried basic income programs, recipients have said it helped them secure better housing and jobs, improved their food security, and ultimately live healthier lives.

A basic income, whether guaranteed or universal, may seem like a revolutionary concept, but it's actually been debated in American politics for centuries, dating back to the nation's founding.

A concept as old as the nation itself

In the 1790s, Thomas Paine, one of the country's Founding Fathers, argued in favor of multiple lump sum payments similar to a modern UBI. One of the payments would have been dispersed when a person reached adulthood, paid for with funds from property taxes.

In his pamphlet called "Agrarian Justice," Paine said people were owed this money because private land ownership prevented them from hunting and farming freely. Paine suggested another series of payments for people at retirement age.

One of Paine's contemporaries, Thomas Spence, an English activist in the mid-19th century, called for payments that mirrored the modern idea of UBI much more directly: He suggested higher property taxes to support an unconditional cash income for the entire population.

It took centuries, but Paine's and Spence's ideas hit the mainstream in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Nixon supported a basic income

Martin Luther King Jr. promoted a basic income in the 1960s as a form of economic equality, noting that poverty impacts both white and Black Americans.

"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income," King wrote in his 1967 book, "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?"

Two years later, President Richard Nixon issued a similar proclamation with some caveats that reflect modern-day objections, like the idea that direct cash payments will discourage recipients from working. He called it a "Family Assistance Plan."

"For a family of four now on welfare, with no outside income, the basic federal payment would be $1,600 a year," Nixon said. "A guaranteed income would undermine the incentive to work; the family assistance plan that I propose increases the incentive to work. A guaranteed income establishes a right without any responsibilities; family assistance recognizes a need and establishes a responsibility."

Despite years of advocacy, Congress never passed Nixon's plan. Instead, conservatives like President Ronald Reagan ushered in a new era of anti-welfare sentiment, though UBI and welfare differ in many ways.

That didn't stop states and cities from trying, however.

Another program launched in the 1970s that shares the spirit of universal basic income is the Alaska Permanent Fund, which distributes lump sums of money to residents as annual dividends depending on the state's oil revenue.

While American politicians and public figures have scratched their heads on whether and how to implement basic income in the United States in modern times, other countries have made it work at varying scales.

A number of countries have tried basic income programs. For instance, Canada launched a basic income experiment about 50 years ago that continues today. It helps youth transitioning out of foster care. Nations such as Finland, Italy, and Uganda, among others, have also implemented pilot programs in the past.

Modern iterations of UBI

Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur, revived the debate around a universal basic income when he ran for president in 2020. He proposed giving every adult $1,000 a month as part of what he called a "Freedom Dividend." Yang's candidacy ultimately fizzled, along with the basic income debate.

After the success of pandemic-era stimulus checks, however, as well as interest from Silicon Valley leaders like Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — who worry AI could make UBI necessary if humans lose their jobs en masse — basic income experiments are now popping up around the country.

The Stanford Basic Income Lab says the United States now has the most active basic income programs in the world. The programs vary in scale, targeting hundreds to thousands of people. Altman backed one of the largest basic income programs ever. It spanned three states and targeted 3,000 people.

More localized programs have also seen success. A Birmingham basic income program helped single mothers afford childcare, for instance, and a similar basic income program in New Mexico helped immigrant families pay their rent and secure work. A program in Los Angeles prompted local officials to try a basic income program for survivors of domestic violence.

Basic income has also been on political ballots. A recent basic income proposal in Oregon would have given all state residents a $1,600 annual rebate by implementing a 3% tax on corporations in the state once they hit a certain revenue threshold. The opposition effort raised millions to fight the ballot measure, which was ultimately defeated in the November election.

"Oregonians overwhelmingly believe that corporations should start paying their fair share in taxes and that today's economy is rigged against us," the organizers behind the proposal said after its election defeat. "We will continue to fight for a fairer and more just economy for Oregon."

While interest in a basic income is growing, so is political opposition. There have been legal challenges to basic income programs in Houston and San Francisco and legislation introduced in Iowa and elsewhere that would prevent local governments from launching basic income studies.

And as President Donald Trump's administration looks to reduce government spending, the possibility of a federal universal basic income is likely on hold.

• President Donald Trump has issued a wave of executive orders targeting high-profile law firms.
• Trump has restricted clearances — ultimately limiting the way they do business — for firms that have clashed with his administration.
• While some firms have agreed to Trump's demands, others have sued the administration.

As Donald Trump has taken aim at Big Law in recent weeks, some law firms have made deals with the president, while others are refusing to throw in the towel.

The president's wide-reaching orders have prompted reviews of each firm's government contracts, canceling security clearances for some employees and, in certain cases, blocking them from entering federal buildings — including courthouses.

Trump has accused the Big Law firms — including Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie, and Covington & Burling, among others — of weaponizing the judicial system. His orders have, in turn, made it harder for the firms to continue conducting business as usual. Several firms have alleged in lawsuits that the executive orders intended to chill free speech and deter clients from doing business with them. Others have agreed to work with the administration to avoid punitive executive actions against them.

The president has singled out a string of law firms that he says have wronged him in some capacity, have worked with his political opponents, or have had diversity initiatives that are counter to his anti-DEI efforts.

What's more, Trump instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify firms with "frivolous" cases against the administration so that they could be targeted for further executive action.

Whether they're on the ropes or down for the count, here are the firms Trump is taking on, how they've responded, and where the legal process stands for those who have challenged him in court.

Paul Weiss

On March 14, Trump issued an executive order directed at the prominent New York City-based law firm Paul Weiss, where he railed against the attorney Mark Pomerantz and decried what he said was "unlawful discrimination" from diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the firm.

Pomerantz previously left Paul Weiss to aid the Manhattan District Attorney's office as it probed Trump's finances. When Pomerantz resigned as special district attorney in February 2022, he wrote in a departing letter that he believed Trump was "guilty of numerous felony violations."

In the order, Trump sought to revoke security clearances and bar access to government buildings for attorneys of the firm. Such a sweeping directive could also include federal courthouses, a scenario that would be detrimental to the firm's work.

However, Trump just days later rescinded the executive order and announced an agreement with Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp. Trump said the firm would provide $40 million in pro bono work for causes that the administration supports and end its DEI policies.

Karp received a heap of criticism, with many questioning why Paul Weiss didn't challenge Trump's order. In an email to the firm's attorneys, he said there was a desire from the outset to challenge the directive. In the same email, though, Karp argued that even if Paul Weiss won in court, it would become "persona non grata" with the Trump White House, which could prompt a wave of clients to switch to other firms and subsequently threaten the viability of the firm.

"It was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the administration," Karp wrote in the email.

Perkins Coie

On March 6, Trump targeted the law firm Perkins Coie, issuing an executive order to suspend the security clearances of the firm's attorneys and criticizing its diversity and inclusion policies.

In the order, Trump called out what he said was the firm's "dishonest and dangerous activity."

The president, in his order, highlighted the firm's representation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — his rival in the 2016 presidential election — during that year's tumultuous campaign.

However, Perkins Coie struck back, filing a lawsuit against the administration for actions that it said "violates core constitutional rights, including the rights to free speech and due process."

"At the heart of the order is an unlawful attack on the freedom of all Americans to select counsel of their choice without fear of retribution or punishment from the government," Perkins Coie managing director Bill Malley said in a statement in March. "We were compelled to take this action to protect our firm and our clients."

The day after Perkins Coie filed its suit, a federal judge agreed to temporarily block part of the president's executive order.

Perkins Coie, in a statement, said the ruling was "an important first step in ensuring this unconstitutional Executive Order is never enforced."

Covington & Burling LLP

Trump on February 25 signed a memorandum to evaluate federal contracts and direct the suspension of security clearances for some employees at Covington & Burling, a DC-based law firm known for its antitrust work.

The president in the memo said he was suspending the clearances of individuals who advised former special counsel Jack Smith.

Smith brought two federal cases against Trump — one for election interference in the 2020 presidential election and the other for retaining classified documents — but both were dropped after the president won reelection to a second term in November 2024.

In the memo, Trump went after individuals whom he said were "involved in the weaponization of government" and named Peter Koski, a lawyer at Covington representing Smith.

A Covington spokesperson in March said it was representing Smith in an "individual" capacity.

"We recently agreed to represent Jack Smith when it became apparent that he would become a subject of a government investigation," the spokesperson said in a statement. "We look forward to defending Mr. Smith's interests and appreciate the trust he has placed in us to do so."

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Skadden made a deal with Trump, acting before it was singled out in any executive orders. The firm promised to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services "to causes that the President and Skadden both support," Trump announced on March 28.

Skadden also affirmed its commitment to merit-based hiring and employee retention, Trump said. The firm also agreed that it would refrain from engaging in "illegal DEI discrimination," according to a copy of the agreement that Trump shared on Truth Social.

In a statement, Jeremy London, Skadden's executive partner, said the firm "engaged proactively" with the administration to reach the agreement.

"We firmly believe that this outcome is in the best interests of our clients, our people, and our Firm," London said.

Speaking from the White House, Trump referred to the deal as "essentially a settlement."

Within the firm, some associates and employees expressed frustration about the deal, calling it the beginning of the end for Skadden.

In the weeks leading up to the agreement, Skadden associate Rachel Cohen publicly resigned and circulated an open letter among associates at top firms calling out their employers for what she has described as inaction in the face of the administration's attacks.

After the deal was announced, another employee, Brenna Frey, also resigned publicly in an announcement on LinkedIn.

Elias Law Group

The chair of Elias Law Group took a different approach after it was targeted by the administration.

Trump named the Elias Law Group in his "frivolous" lawsuits memo, formally titled "Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court."

It claimed that the law firm was "deeply involved in the creation of a false 'dossier' by a foreign national designed to provide a fraudulent basis for Federal law enforcement to investigate a Presidential candidate in order to alter the outcome of the Presidential election."

The memo went on to say that the firm "intentionally sought to conceal the role of his client — failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — in the dossier."

Marc Elias, the Democratic election lawyer who founded and chairs the group, released a statement swinging back at Trump, whose actions target "every attorney and law firm who dares to challenge his assault on the rule of law," he said.

"President Trump's goal is clear," Elias said in the statement. "He wants lawyers and law firms to capitulate and cower until there is no one left to oppose his Administration in court."

Adding that American democracy is in a state of "peril," Elias said his law firm would not cower.

"Elias Law Group will not be deterred from fighting for democracy in court," he said. "There will be no negotiation with this White House about the clients we represent or the lawsuits we bring on their behalf."

Jenner & Block

Trump signed an order naming Jenner & Block on March 25 that revoked security clearances from the firm's attorneys and ordered a review of the firm's contracts with the federal government.

Trump's order singled out Andrew Weissmann, a former Jenner attorney who Trump accused of building his career around "weaponized government and abuse of power." Weissmann was a lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller's Special Counsel's Office, which investigated Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and its ties to Russia.

Jenner issued a statement calling the order an "unconstitutional executive order that has already been declared unlawful by a federal court."

"We remain focused on serving and safeguarding our clients' interests with the dedication, integrity, and expertise that has defined our firm for more than one hundred years and will pursue all appropriate remedies," the statement from Jenner said.

Jenner also fought back with a lawsuit. The firm is represented by Cooley LLP, a liberal-leaning firm that has hired lawyers from Democratic administrations.

On March 28, Judge John D. Bates of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order that keeps the Trump administration from taking action against Jenner. On April 1, Bates extended this order until a final judgement has been made. Both the Justice Department and Jenner consented to the extension.

Following the ruling, Jenner said in a statement that the order holds "no legal weight."

"We will continue to do what we have always done, our job as lawyers and fearless advocates for our clients," the firm said.

WilmerHale

The Trump administration has also targeted WilmerHale, which employed Mueller and other lawyers who worked with the Justice Department to investigate ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign.

On March 27, Trump signed an executive order that suspended security clearances for WilmerHale employees and limited their access to federal buildings. The order also revoked WilmerHale's government contracts for engaging in "partisan representations to achieve political ends" and "efforts to discriminate on the basis of race."

In contrast with other firms that have inked deals with the president, WilmerHale filed a lawsuit.

The firm hired Paul Clement, the conservative legal superstar of the firm Clement & Murphy, to fight back against the Trump administration.

"This lawsuit is absolutely critical to vindicating the First Amendment, our adversarial system of justice, and the rule of law," Clement told Business Insider in a statement.

On the afternoon of March 28, Judge Richard J. Leon of the US District Court for the District of Columbia approved a motion for a temporary restraining order to halt executive actions against WilmerHale.

"There is no doubt this retaliatory action chills speech and legal advocacy, or that it qualifies as a constitutional harm," Leon wrote.

A spokesperson for WilmerHale called the executive order unconstitutional and praised the court's "swift action."

Milbank

On April 2, Trump announced on Truth Social that he had struck a preemptive deal with Milbank without targeting the firm for executive action.

The terms of the deal, according to the president's announcement, include the firm's agreement to end any DEI-based hiring practices, and to perform at least $100 million worth of pro bono legal work to advance causes supported by the Trump administration, such as "assisting veterans" and "combatting antisemitism."

In addition, Milbank's pro bono committee will ensure the firm takes on cases representing "the full political spectrum, including Conservative ideals," and commits that it "will not deny representation to clients" based on the personal political views of individual lawyers, per Trump's announcement.

"Milbank LLP approached President Donald J. Trump and his Administration, stating their resolve to help end the Weaponization of the Justice System and the Legal Profession," reads a statement from the White House included in Trump's post. "The President continues to build an unrivaled network of Lawyers, who will put a stop to Partisan Lawfare in America, and restore Liberty and Justice FOR ALL."

Milbank's chairman, Scott Edelman, said in a statement posted by Trump that, after a "constructive dialogue," the firm was "pleased we were so quickly able to find common ground" with the administration.

When reached by Business Insider, a spokesperson for the firm provided a letter sent by Edelman to Milbank's staff in which he said the agreement "is very much in Milbank's interest."

"The Administration's expressed concerns about big law firms, and in some cases its entry of Executive Orders against particular firms, have created uncertainty for law firms like ours," Edelman's letter to staff reads. "With this agreement, we believe we have gone a long way to putting these issues behind us. But we have done so in a way that allows us to continue to focus on the Firm's values and missions, including with respect to pro bono and our hope to foster an inclusive, non-discriminatory community where all of our members have an equal opportunity to succeed."

Edelman added: "Having now reached an agreement with the Administration, we can continue to do what we do best — focus on providing the best possible advice, counseling and service to our clients."

Susman Godfrey

On April 9, Trump signed an executive memorandum targeting Susman Godfrey, a specialized litigation firm.

In a fact sheet, the White House accused Susman of spearheading "efforts to weaponize the American legal system and degrade the quality of American elections."

Trump's order sought to immediately suspend any Susman security clearances held by the firm's employees, "pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest." The federal government said it would also terminate any contracts with the firm.

The firm's hiring practices will also be reviewed "to ensure compliance with civil rights laws against racial bias."

On April 11, Susman filed a complaint against the Trump administration, arguing that Trump's executive order was in violation of the Constitution.

"Unless the Judiciary acts with resolve—now—to repudiate this blatantly unconstitutional Executive Order and the others like it, a dangerous and perhaps irreversible precedent will be set," the complaint reads.

"If President Trump's Executive Orders are allowed to stand, future presidents will face no constraint when they seek to retaliate against a different set of perceived foes. What for two centuries has been beyond the pale will become the new normal," it adds.

Willkie Farr & Gallagher

Willkie Farr & Gallagher, which employs Doug Emhoff, husband of former Vice President Kamala Harris, struck a deal with the administration, pledging at least $100 million in pro bono legal work for conservative causes, Trump said in an April 1 social media post.

"Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP proactively reached out to President Trump and his Administration, offering their decisive commitment to ending the Weaponization of the Justice System and the Legal Profession," the White House said, according to Trump's post on Truth Social.

The firm's ties to Trump go to the 1990s when it represented the then real estate developer in a bankruptcy case.

In 2023, Willkie brought Tim Heaphy as partner. Heaphy was the former chief investigative counsel for the congressional committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol.

The firm also represents X, Elon Musk's social media platform.

Trump said that Willkie Farr & Gallagher also committed to "Merit-Based Hiring, Promotion, and Retention," which touches on the Trump's efforts to dismantle DEI initiatives.

A representative for Willkie Farr & Gallagher did not respond to a request for comment.

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft

Trump said in a Truth Social post April 11 that the administration had come to an agreement with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, saying the law firm agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services.

The services would go toward causes supported by Trump and the law firm, including assisting veterans and law enforcement, combatting antisemitism, and "ensuring fairness in our justice system."

The statement said the firm also agreed to "not engage in illegal DEI discrimination and preferences" or to deny legal representation "because of the personal political views of individual lawyers."

"The substance of our agreement is consistent with the principles that have guided Cadwalader for over 230 years: We always put our client's interests first; We believe that Justice should be available to everyone; and We are committed to attracting, retaining and nurturing the very best talent from all backgrounds," Patrick Quinn, managing partner at Cadwalader, said in a statement shared by Trump.

Cadwalader did not respond to a request for comment.

Kirkland & Ellis

Trump also announced on April 11 the administration had come to an agreement with an additional four law firms, including Kirkland & Ellis. The president said in a Truth Social post the firms agreed to provide a total of $500 million in pro bono legal services to go toward the same types of causes, with each firm contributing $125 million.

The firms also agreed to engage outside counsel to oversee their hiring practices and ensure they comply with antidiscrimination laws.

Trump said as a result of the agreement, he would end an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation into the law firms over their DEI practices, which was initially announced on March 17.

In a joint statement shared by Trump, the senior executives at the four law firms said: "We have resolved this matter while upholding long-held principles important to each of our Firms: Equal Employment Opportunity; providing pro bono assistance to a wide range of underserved populations, and ensuring fairness in the Justice System; and representing a broad spectrum of clients on various matters."

In a firm-wide internal memo obtained by BI, the Kirkland & Ellis executive committee said the agreement "resolves the EEOC's investigation, including its broad request for information about our people and our clients, which we no longer will be required to provide, and we will not be the target of an executive order."

"We made the decision to pursue this solution because at our very core our mission is to protect and support our people and our clients, and this agreement does both," the memo said.

A&O Shearman

A&O Shearman was among the law firms with which Trump said on April 11 that his administration had reached an agreement. The firm agreed to provide $125 million in pro bono legal services to causes supported by the administration. It also agreed to engage outside counsel to oversee its hiring practices, and the EEOC investigation into the firms has stopped.

A&O Shearman did not respond to a request for comment.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett also reached an agreement with the White House to provide $125 million in pro bono legal services to causes supported by the firm and Trump, as well as engage outside counsel to ensure its hiring practices comply with antidiscrimination laws.

As a result of the agreement, the EEOC investigation into the firm's hiring practices was stopped.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett did not respond to a request for comment.

Latham & Watkins

Latham & Watkins was also among the four firms that reached an agreement with Trump, according to the April 11 announcement. The firm agreed to provide $125 million in pro bono legal services as well as engage outside counsel to oversee its hiring. As a result, the Trump administration ended the EEOC investigation into the firm.

Latham & Watkins did not respond to a request for comment.

• Skadden is the latest Big Law firm to strike a deal with Trump to avoid punitive executive action.
• The firm said it would provide $100M in pro bono legal work to causes supported by the administration.
• One Skadden associate said they find the firm's dealings with Trump "unforgivable."

Another Big Law domino has fallen at President Donald Trump's feet.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services "to causes that the President and Skadden both support," Trump announced from the White House on Friday afternoon.

The firm also affirmed its commitment to merit-based hiring and employee retention, Trump said. In a copy of the agreement that Trump shared on Truth Social, Skadden agreed that it would not "engage in illegal DEI discrimination."

In recent weeks, the president has targeted major law firms that have worked for and with his political opponents by revoking their security clearances and calling for a review of their government contracts. He also authorized Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to sanction law firms that file lawsuits they deem "frivolous" to this administration. In response, some Big Law firms have chosen to fight back in court, while others — like Skadden — have chosen to make deals with the president to avoid punitive executive actions.

In a statement, Jeremy London, Skadden's executive partner, said the firm "engaged proactively" with the Trump administration to reach the agreement.

"The Firm looks forward to continuing our productive relationship with President Trump and his Admin," London said. "We firmly believe that this outcome is in the best interests of our clients, our people, and our Firm."

Trump described the deal with Skadden as "essentially a settlement."

"We appreciate Skadden coming to the table," Trump said.

One current Skadden employee told Business Insider that they felt the deal betrayed the firm's values and represented an "unforgivable affront" to the firm's culture. They spoke with BI anonymously to speak freely about the situation, as did another who echoed their concerns but did not wish to be quoted. BI has verified their identities.

"In addition to arguably being the best law firm in the country, many associates, including myself, joined the firm because its culture aligned with our values marginally more than other top law firms. That culture, and its emphasis on equity and inclusion, goes back to the firm's origins," the employee said, referencing the fact that founding partners' Jewish and Catholic backgrounds barred them from holding top-level positions in the legal industry in 1948 when the firm was formed.

The employee added: "There is a general consensus among associates who are politically engaged that a deal reached with the Trump administration will mark the beginning of the end for Skadden."

"Partners and associates are considering leaving, much of the firm is demoralized, and we will struggle to recruit the best talent for years to come," the Skadden employee said.

At least one attorney at the firm has resigned in response to Skadden's deal with Trump. Brenna Frey announced her decision to leave the firm on LinkedIn, writing that Skadden's agreement with Trump was "a craven attempt to sacrifice the rule of law for self-preservation."

"As one of my more eloquent former colleagues put it: 'Do not pretend that what is happening is normal or excusable. It isn't,'" Frey wrote. "There is only one acceptable response from attorneys to the Trump administration's demands: The rule of law matters."

She added: "As an attorney, if my employer cannot stand up for the rule of law, then I cannot ethically continue to work for them."

Rachel Cohen, a now-former firm employee, publicly resigned from Skadden last week after she said the firm had not responded properly to Trump's threats against other firms, including Paul Weiss and Perkins Coie. She circulated an open letter among associates at other top firms who called for their employers to take stronger action in response to the administration's orders targeting Big Law.

Skadden is the latest firm to reach an agreement with Trump amid his administration's challenges to the industry. Some lawyers and legal scholars previously told Business Insider that these targeted attacks on Big Law by the government are "unprecedented" and threaten not just the legal field but also the rule of law itself.

Paul Weiss, which was named as one of the firms Trump was eyeing for executive countermeasures, ultimately brokered a deal with the administration. Trump rescinded his order against the firm in exchange for Paul Weiss' agreement to eliminate DEI considerations from its hiring practices and the firm's pledge of $40 million in pro bono legal services to initiatives endorsed by the Trump administration.

Business Insider previously reported the language in Paul Weiss' copy of the agreement did not include references to DEI that were in Trump's announcement.

Other firms targeted by Trump, such as Perkins Coie, the Elias Law Group, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale have signaled that they will not back down and plan to fight executive orders in court. Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block have so far seen some success after the firm filed suit to challenge the order against it.

Jenner & Block was granted a temporary restraining order on Friday, blocking the Trump administration from punishing the firm. The New York Times reported that US District Judge John Bates, who is overseeing the case, described the order against the firm as "disturbing."

WilmerHale was also granted a temporary restraining order on Friday. The order, issued by US District Judge Richard Leon, blocks portions of Trump's executive order from taking effect. In his decision, Leon said there was "no doubt this retaliatory action chills speech and legal advocacy, or that it qualifies as a constitutional harm."

US District Judge Beryl Howell on March 12 partially blocked Trump's order against Perkins Coie. Politico reported that during an emergency hearing, the judge said that the "retaliatory animus" of Trump's order against the firm was "clear on its face" and "runs head-on into the wall of First Amendment protections."

On March 21, the Justice Department filed a motion to disqualify Howell from overseeing the lawsuit, arguing the judge is "insufficiently impartial" to rule on the case.

• Apple is continuing its understated advertising spree on its hit AppleTV show "Severance."
• The Lumon Terminal Pro, a prop from the show, is listed on the Apple Store alongside Macs.
• "Severance" became AppleTV's most popular show last month.

Attention, "Severance" fans. If you've been dying to have your own "innie" experience, Apple has a surprise for you.

Apple is advertising the Lumon Terminal Pro — the desktop computer where Lumon's severed workers do their mysterious data refinement work — in the Apple Store alongside other Mac products.

AppleTV's "Severance," which just finished its second season last week, follows a group of employees at Lumon Industries whose work personas ("innies") are medically severed from their outside selves ("outies"), causing them to operate on different consciousnesses depending on their locations.

But the prop desktop isn't actually for sale.

Instead, on the Apple Store page for the Lumon Terminal Pro, viewers can watch an 11-minute behind-the-scenes look at how the show's creators went through the editing process on Apple products.

"We are pleased to bring you a film detailing the art of arranging moving images to elicit an emotional response. If during the viewing you experience feelings of warmth, an increased heart rate, or perspiration, do not be alarmed," reads the desktop screen. "In fact, rejoice! As you have been successfully inspired."

It follows a series of other stunts and pop-ups with the "Severance" cast. The star-studded cast appeared for a pop-up in New York's Grand Central Terminal in January ahead of the show's season 2 premiere. Likewise, after the season 2 finale last week, the cast did another pop-up in London.

The company announced in February that "Severance" had unseated "Ted Lasso" as its top-ranking show, according to Deadline.

• Donald Trump is targeting law firms that have crossed him.
• So far, he's won $40 million in free work from one firm, and a high-profile associate has resigned.
• Legal scholars warn the unprecedented attacks are a threat to the industry — and the Constitution.

President Donald Trump's game of hardball against Big Law has the legal industry in an uproar, with some firms vowing to fight back.

A lawyer at a top 20 firm told Business Insider they helped draft papers to file in court in case their firm is targeted by the administration.

"We very quickly put together a set of briefing and papers that could be filed," the lawyer said. "We're ready to go to court and challenge the order."

Trump's pressure campaign — which lawyers and scholars say is an unprecedented threat to the legal community and a blow to the First Amendment — shows no sign of letting up.

"The legal industry is under attack. Trump pushes the limits of everything: the legal boundaries, picking fights with massive law firms. He's calling for the impeachment of federal judges," Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Business Insider.

"So look, say what you want about him, but he seems to be winning — or at least putting a lot of pressure on folks throughout the legal industry to capitulate and bend to his will."

Trump's attacks on Big Law

In recent weeks, Trump has targeted major law firms — like Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie, and Covington & Burling — ordering reviews of their government contracts, stripping the firm's lawyers of their security clearances, and preventing employees of the firms from entering federal buildings.

Trump has described the firms as "dishonest and dangerous," accusing each of weaponizing the judicial process and threatening national security by representing his opponents or participating in investigations into his finances and behavior.

Large law firms' clients tend to hire them not just for their knowledge, but for their connections with the government, so Trump's threats to destroy those connections are a powerful cudgel.

Trump announced Thursday that he had rescinded his executive order targeting Paul Weiss after the firm agreed to reevaluate its hiring practices in alignment with Trump's anti-DEI initiatives and provide the administration with $40 million in pro bono legal work.

"I couldn't sleep last night," a former Paul Weiss employee told Business Insider. "The firm that prepped Kamala, sent its leaders to Ukraine, defended state abortion rights, and championed DE&I in law has made a deal with the devil. I'm sure many at the firm are feeling betrayed."

Rachel Cohen, an associate from the high-profile firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, publicly resigned over what she said was her firm's resistance to challenging the president's orders.

"Paul Weiss' decision to cave to the Trump administration on DEI, representation, and staffing has forced my hand," Cohen wrote in a resignation email, which she said she sent to her entire firm. "We do not have time. It is now, or it is never, and if it is never, I will not continue to work here."

A letter signed by 141 Paul Weiss alumni was published on Monday, decrying what it called "the gravest threat to the independence of the legal profession since at least the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy." The signatories' tenure dated back to the 1990s but did not include a single ex-partner.

In an email to his staff on Sunday, Paul Weiss Chairman Brad Karp called Trump's order "unprecedented" in the firm's 150-year history and an "existential threat."

"The executive order could easily have destroyed our firm. It brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people, and our clients," Karp wrote.

Perkins Coie, which was also targeted by an executive order from Trump that would revoke its lawyers' security clearances and cancel government contracts, has chosen to fight back. The major Seattle-based law firm filed a legal challenge earlier this month.

Other law firms have begun to rally around Perkins Coie. The law firm Munger Tolles Olsen, which has about 200 attorneys in three offices, said Saturday it would file an amicus brief supporting Perkins Coie. Keker, Van Nest, & Peters, a highly respected San Francisco-based firm with more than 100 attorneys, said in a social media post it would also sign the amicus brief.

"We encourage law firm leaders to sign on to an amicus effort in support of Perkins Coie's challenge to the Administration's executive order targeting the firm, and to resist the Administration's erosion of the rule of law," Keker, Van Nest, & Peters wrote in its post.

Selendy Gay, a New York-based firm with 80 attorneys, updated its homepage with a statement in support of Perkins Coie, saying it "rejects the notion that the government can punish lawyers for their choice of clients or threaten judges for presiding over cases adverse to the administration."

"We stand with the brave lawyers who will oppose any attempts by the government to intimidate members of the bar or judiciary for doing their jobs."

On Friday, Trump moved to disqualify the judge presiding over the Perkins Coie suit, citing bias.

The president also on Friday sent a memo to Attorney General Pam Bondi ordering her to identify "frivolous" lawsuits against his administration and flag the law firms associated with the cases so they can be targeted for punitive actions like those levied against Paul Weiss and Perkins Coie.

"That was another shot across the bow. People really have to now think, are they going to tolerate this kind of behavior?" asked Alex Kristofcak, a former assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, who was put on leave after criticizing Trump's DEI policies. He has since resigned.

"The federal government is extremely powerful. I am frankly pretty scared about what else they could do. I'm very happy that I'm a citizen, so I guess, at least in theory, they can't deport me. It sounds like such a hysterical thing to say, but I don't think that it is, given what's happening."

A 'constitutional crisis'

Walter Olson, a Cato Institute fellow who writes about the legal profession, told Business Insider he's "not aware of any precedent" similar to Trump's attacks on law firms.

"There's nothing on this scale," Olson said. "There's nothing involving this kind of retaliation using presidential powers that rarely get used in any context."

Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told BI that the government, in the late 1940s, targeted writers, lawyers, and professors for perceived disloyalty during the period known as the Second Red Scare, led by then-Senator Joseph McCarthy — but that the episode has long been considered "a shameful part of our history in terms of free speech."

"This level of it is unprecedented," Fallow said. "Of course, firms have always played the game, and they've always been cognizant of which party is in power and have tried to — for example, when Republicans are in power — hire Republican attorneys. So it's not that that hasn't been happening, but this kind of stark bullying and capitulation is just really shocking."

Very few people are inclined to pity a multimillion-dollar law firm, but Trump's attacks on the legal field have implications beyond those firms themselves.

Rahmani said the Trump administration's attacks on Big Law violate both the First Amendment, since lawyers should represent who they want without penalty, and the Fifth Amendment, because the moves can make it harder for average citizens to secure legal counsel from firms that the Trump administration hasn't approved.

"Something like this has never happened, or maybe hasn't happened since the time of Andrew Jackson. I mean, this is really a kind of a constitutional crisis," Rahmani said. "I think our legal system is under attack, and it's a question of who's going to step up and defend it."

• Eric Anderson was fired from the National Park Service amid DOGE's federal workforce cuts.
• The mass layoffs of federal workers caused a string of lawsuits.
• Though confident he was fired illegally, Anderson said he spent weeks feeling frozen.

Eric Anderson has had a rough month.

Instead of feeling the love on Valentine's Day, he was unceremoniously fired from his position as a federal worker at the National Park Service.

"My letter said, 'You are terminated effective immediately.' So that was my Happy Valentine's email," Anderson, a 48-year-old in Chicago, told Business Insider. "For the last month, I've been just wondering, 'OK, what is going to happen?'"

It came as part of a slew of layoffs instigated by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's White House DOGE office, which is working to cut the federal workforce as it reduces government spending.

In February, the administration fired thousands of probationary employees — those who had been in their roles for less than two years — across federal agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Small Business Administration, and the Office of Personnel Management. Anderson was one of them.

The White House had fired about 25,000 workers across 18 departments and agencies before a federal judge temporarily blocked the orders earlier this month. The White House also extended a buyout offer to federal employees that similarly became the subject of litigation. Though the administration hoped to entice 5% to 10% of the federal workforce to take the deal, only about 75,000 — or about 3.75% — accepted the offer.

From essential to disposable and back again

The Interior Department, which includes the National Park Service, lost 1,712 workers, according to a document the agency filed with the Justice Department.

Anderson worked primarily at the Indiana Dunes National Park. He said his official title was biological science technician, but he was working toward a title change to wildland firefighter, which would better describe his duties.

"During the growing season, I go out, and I do plant surveys in the prescribed burn units at not only the Indiana Dunes but other national parks around the Great Lakes," he said. "You do that kind of work because you love it. You do it because you want to see it better for future generations."

Though his termination letter said he was underperforming, he said that didn't align with his past performance reviews or what his supervisors told officials who were making the cuts.

"They're like: 'We absolutely need these people. They're part of our fire crew. They do a lot,'" Anderson recalled. "My supervisors did their best to justify why I should still be there and why I'm essential."

In March, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstate probationary employees across multiple agencies. US District Judge William Alsup said the premise for terminating employees based on "performance" issues was an unlawful "sham" to get around existing legal requirements for federal layoffs.

Many of the reinstated workers have been placed on administrative leave, which means they are being paid to do nothing instead of returning to their jobs. The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government's human resources department, said in a court filing that administrative leave was the first step toward reinstating workers.

Still, Anderson, who was just informed that he'd be reinstated, has doubts and remains concerned about what he called "the systematic dismantling of the apolitical civil service system."

Even though he feels confident that he was terminated illegally, Anderson said he spent weeks feeling frozen.

"I was very much in limbo," he said. "Should I be applying for other jobs? Should I be trying to line up private consulting work? It's unlike any time I've ever been between jobs."

Editor's Note: Anderson spoke with BI prior to being reinstated.

• Former Assistant US Attorney Alex Kristofcak was put on leave after criticizing Trump's DEI policy.
• He has since left his position at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
• Kristofcak is now urging leaders to speak out against Trump's attacks on the judiciary.

A former assistant US attorney said he was put on leave after publicly criticizing the Trump administration's DEI policies.

He's not going quietly.

Alex Kristofcak, 44, who was until recently a federal attorney focused on civil litigation in the Southern District of New York, was put on administrative leave after a "critical social media post."

He has since resigned from his position altogether, though he plans to continue working in the legal industry, he told Business Insider.

In a LinkedIn post two weeks ago, Kristofcak criticized a US attorney in Washington, DC, who sent a letter to the dean of Georgetown Law School to enforce anti-DEI policies at the university. Kristofcak called the letter a "grotesque abuse of power" at the time.

The next day, he was placed on administrative leave.

"I've been told in no uncertain terms that my criticism prompted this action," Kristofcak said in a new LinkedIn post on Saturday.

The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York could not be reached by phone Sunday evening. The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

"While the experience has been jarring, it is not wholly surprising: the Trump administration has made it clear that it does not tolerate dissent," Kristofcak said on LinkedIn. "And because of my background, I am familiar with this playbook. When I was born in Czechoslovakia in 1981, my homeland was still under communist rule. Though I was fortunate to experience the country's democratic transition as a child in 1989, my formative years were shaped by fresh memories of dictatorship and its tactics."

Trump has also targeted several Big Law firms — like Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie, and Covington & Burling — ordering reviews of their government contracts, stripping the firm's lawyers of their security clearances, and preventing employees of the firms from entering federal buildings.

Trump has described the firms as "dishonest and dangerous," accusing each of weaponizing the judicial process and threatening national security by representing his opponents or participating in investigations into his finances and behavior.

In a memo on Friday, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to flag firms affiliated with "frivolous" lawsuits against his administration so that he could consider executive actions against them. Trump's memo called the behavior of some law firms "unscrupulous."

Since taking office, the Trump administration has made sweeping changes to the federal government, targeting everything from public education to veteran affairs.

Many of the president's executive orders have been blocked or delayed by judges amid ongoing lawsuits, including challenging the termination of DEI programs.

"I was already planning to leave the Department of Justice at the end of the month. I had concluded that the hostile environment created by President Trump, Elon Musk, and the political appointees at the Justice Department made my position untenable," Kristofcak said on LinkedIn.

The politicization of the department and "the treatment of other career employees" pushed him to leave his post, he told BI.

"As we speak, there are a lot of conversations happening where people are trying to figure out where they want to land on the spectrum of responses," Kristofcak said. "In the next couple of days, implicitly, everyone is either going to take a stand one way or another, or they will stay silent. That, in and of itself, will speak volumes."

There has been an exodus of top staff at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. In February, several top prosecutors resigned after refusing to abide by the Justice Department's request to drop federal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

On LinkedIn, Kristofcak urged those in positions of power to speak out.

"I grew up watching a totalitarian system collapse, giving way to democracy. Now, I find myself witnessing concerning parallels in my adopted homeland," Kristofcak said. "Speaking out may have cost me my position, but silence would have cost me much more."

He told BI that the responses from those in the industry over the next few days will be critical.

"Unfortunately, I really do believe that this is one of those things where everyone stands together or everyone falls together," he said.

• Rachel Cohen, a Harvard grad, resigned from Skadden to protest the Trump administration.
• As Donald Trump targets Big Law firms, some of those same firms have "capitulated," she said.
• Before making headlines, Cohen spent years advocating for immigration and abortion rights.

The Harvard Law grad who catapulted into the center of President Donald Trump's battle with Big Law — quitting her job at a top firm in a very public fashion this week — has an extensive history of advocacy.

And it doesn't seem like Rachel A. Cohen, 30, plans to fade into the background since leaving Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, where she'd been an associate for 2.5 years.

In a TikTok on Saturday, Cohen warned about what might happen if the legal industry "rolls over" under the weight of Trump's demands, calling Paul Weiss' deal with Trump a "capitulation."

"If you are wondering if I am being alarmist, look at what just happened," she said. "And what I am telling you is going to happen next is that if the industry rolls over on this, that immigration net will be cast far wider than asylum."

On Reddit, an account that appears to belong to Cohen has been answering queries about the decision to join a Big Law firm in the first place, the decision to quit, and where the passion for law came from.

"[W]hen I was a very young kid (like 7 lmfao) as a social studies project my mom made me pick a city council candidate to support and volunteer for and I have been a vaguely unhinged Political Advocate ever since," the Redditor wrote.

Business Insider could not reach Cohen for comment on Saturday and could not verify the account belonged to her. Still, many posts predate her resignation and align with her public statements.

Cohen announced in a LinkedIn post on Thursday that she was quitting Skadden because she believed the firm had not responded properly to Trump's threats.

She emailed her entire firm, calling for it to take action, and circulated an open letter among associates at top firms, condemning their employers for what she has described as inaction in the face of the administration's attacks.

Trump has targeted law firms he views as aligned with his political opponents by revoking their security clearances and calling for a review of their government contracts.

On March 14, the president revoked the security clearance of employees at Paul Weiss, a top law firm that he accused of weaponizing the judicial process. A week later, he withdrew the executive order after the firm reached an agreement with him.

Trump said Paul Weiss agreed to eliminate DEI considerations from its hiring policies. However, as BI reported, an email the firm sent to its employees said only that it "affirms its commitment to merit-based hiring, promotion, and retention" and will hire experts to do a "comprehensive audit of all of its employment practices." Trump also said the firm agreed to provide $40 million in free legal services to support his administration policies "on issues including assistance for veterans and countering antisemitism."

On Friday, Trump ordered the Justice Department to flag law firms affiliated with "frivolous" lawsuits against his administration. The memo to Attorney General Pam Bondi specifically flagged "unscrupulous behavior by attorneys and law firms" in immigration law.

Cohen's letter said the Trump administration is sending a message that "firms that represent those who oppose the administration's agenda will be punished."

Years of activism predate her law degree

Before she landed in the headlines on Thursday, Cohen had spent years advocating for social causes like abortion, education, and immigration rights.

According to her LinkedIn, she graduated from Ohio State University in 2014, where she studied political science and strategic communication.

She became a special projects manager at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Columbus, Ohio, a youth development organization that mentors school-age kids, and then taught English literature at Providence Public Schools in Rhode Island.

During Trump's first presidency, Cohen volunteered at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England and served on committees of the Rhode Island Democratic Party and the National Organization for Women. Her social media includes smiling photos with Sen. Elizabeth Warren and President Joe Biden, who, at the time, was the former vice president.

In 2019, she began her studies at Harvard Law School, where she held leadership positions at the Harvard Immigration Project and the Journal of Law & Gender. She also worked at the Prison Legal Assistance Project and the Women's Law Association, among other societies. She was an immigration intern at the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia before she graduated from Harvard in 2022.

In the fall of the same year, she began working as a finance associate at Skadden, one of the country's top law firms, where she "maintained a robust pro bono practice focused on immigration and housing law." She held that role until her resignation, which she described as "conditional notice" that is "revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to the current moment."

Skadden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

'Other people will make sacrifices that are tenable to them'

On the Reddit account that appears to be Cohen's, she wrote that she has no plans to return to Big Law. She also said Skadden locked her out of her email when she sent her resignation but is paying out her vacation days and her notice period.

She also said she had planned on leaving Skadden even before the Paul Weiss deal.

"I did not intend to quit yesterday, or this month, or whatever, but I was likely to leave this year anyway and always have planned to do so and take a big pay cut," the post read.

"As the admin started moving, it became clearer to me that timeline was going to need to accelerate, so while I was really hoping to finish the quarter and stay through an asylum hearing I was supervising next month at the very least, this is not the same degree of sacrifice as it would be for many other people.

"That's one of the many things I'm alluding to when I admit this isn't something everyone (or even most people) can do. I'm also white, I have the credentials, I have supportive parents who cannot pay my LOANS but can provide immediate financial assistance, have literally the tightest knit and most supportive and aligned set of friends on the planet, don't have kids, etc etc etc."

She continued, "Someone (maybe many people, maybe they're mostly at PW right now) needed to do it, but everyone does not. Other people will make sacrifices that are tenable to them."

• Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, is worth $17.1 billion, according to Forbes. 
• Durov said the messaging platform had hit 1 billion users.
• "Ahead of us stands WhatsApp — a cheap, watered-down imitation of Telegram," Durov said.

Editor's note: This story first published in March 2022. It has been updated to reflect Telegram's most recent financial figures, its user numbers, and Durov's legal trouble.

Pavel Durov is the founder and owner of messaging app Telegram.

Pavel Durov was born in St. Petersburg in Soviet Russia.

The tech entrepreneur cofounded the encrypted messaging service Telegram with his brother Nikolai in 2013. The brothers were born into a family of intellectuals, according to a biography on the Digital-Life-Design Conference website. Durov spoke at the conference in January 2012.

Durov is now worth $17.1 billion, according to Forbes. Much of his fortune comes from Telegram, which he said hit 1 billion users in March 2025.

"Ahead of us stands WhatsApp — a cheap, watered-down imitation of Telegram," Durov wrote in a post on his Telegram channel announcing the news. "For years, they've desperately tried to copy our innovations while burning billions on lobbying and PR campaigns to slow us down. They failed. Telegram grew, became profitable, and —unlike our competitor — retained its independence."

2024 was a banner year for the platform, marking the first year it turned a profit. In a post on X in December, Durov said the platform ended the year with more than $1 billion in revenue and $500 million in cash reserves. He added that Telegram had paid a "meaningful share" of the $2 billion in debt it had accrued over the past four years by "taking advantage of favorable prices for the Telegram bonds."

Telegram has raised about $2.4 billion in debt financing through several rounds of bond offerings between 2021 and 2024, the New York Times reported.

Before founding Telegram, Durov founded a Russian social network called Vkontakte.

A post shared by Pavel Durov (@durov)

 

Durov created the network in 2006 and sold a 12% stake for $300 million in 2015.

The site brought him fame: He became known as Russia's "biggest celebrity entrepreneur," according to The New York Times. But it also came with political trouble when Durov refused the Kremlin's demands to access Vkontakte data on Ukrainian protest leaders.

Durov said he was fired in April 2014 from his position as the CEO of Vkontakte as state-backed entities sought to control the network, Reuters reported. The Mail.Ru group, which is owned by oligarch Alisher Usmanov, bought the network for $1.47 billion later that year.

Usmanov's press service told Business Insider the group sold Vkontakte. State-run insurer Sogaz now owns it.

Durov told the Times he was forced to leave Moscow in 2014 after a SWAT team appeared at his home.

Durov's conflicts with the Kremlin didn't end with Vkontakte.

In 2018, Telegram was banned in Russia after Durov denied the Kremlin access to user data. In response to the ban, hundreds of people protested, some of whom held signs of Durov illustrated as a saint (pictured above). The app was reinstated in Russia two years later. 

Today, Telegram is playing a major role in the war in Ukraine.

Durov vowed in a Telegram post in March 2022 to protect the data of Ukrainian users. Durov is of partial Ukrainian descent, according to the post.

"When I defied [the Kremlin's] demands, the stakes were high for me personally," Durov wrote. "I stand for our users no matter what. Their right to privacy is sacred."

Durov also launched a cryptocurrency wallet, called Fragment, in 2002. Durov has said the wallet "took only 5 weeks and 5 people including myself to put together."

Durov said some $50 million worth of usernames were purchased less than a month after Fragment launched.

Durov now lives in Dubai, where Telegram's operations are based.

Durov moved to Dubai in 2017 and relocated Telegram's operations to an office in Dubai's Media City, according to Bloomberg. The network had been previously been based in Berlin.

In an interview with Bloomberg in December 2017, Durov said moving to Dubai afforded him "better ways to use [his] money to benefit society," as the city has no personal income tax.

According to the Russian edition of Forbes, Durov obtained citizenship in the United Arab Emirates in February 2021 and was naturalized as a French citizen in August 2021.

In January 2018, Durov wrote on Twitter that Telegram is "unlikely to ever consider any location be [its] permanent base."

Durov has a lively social media presence.

A post shared by Pavel Durov (@durov)

In August 2017, Durov's Instagram post parodying Russian President Vladimir Putin went viral.

Durov's post on Instagram, aptly named the "Putin Shirtless Challenge," called for users to post photos of themselves bare-chested in the style of Putin.

"Two rules from Putin — no photoshop, no pumping. Otherwise you're not an alpha," Durov wrote in the post in August 2017. Over 3,000 posts with Durov's hashtag were uploaded on Instagram. 

Despite having 2.5 million followers on X, Durov doesn't follow anyone, but once followed Elon Musk.

While not much is known about Durov's assets, he's been known to share the occasional yacht shot on Instagram.

A post shared by Pavel Durov (@durov)

Durov shared a photo from the deck of a Lurssen yacht off the coast of Italy in 2016.

The cost of a Lurssen yacht starts at about $1 million and can run as high as $185 million, according to Yacht World. Durov never confirmed if he owned the Lurssen yacht in the photo.

Durov said in an Instagram post in August 2016 that while he wasn't a "fan of giant Lurssen yachts," he liked the manufacturer's sailing vessel. 

Durov posted another photo of a superyacht on Instagram in 2015. And in another post in 2022 on his official Telegram account, Durov claimed he doesn't own any private jets, yachts, cars, or houses, adding that he is "unlike most billionaires."

Durov's profile was once found on Tinder in 2017.

A post shared by Pavel Durov (@durov)

Bloomberg reported that Durov was "half-naked" in his profile photo on the dating app.

"Not looking for anything serious or not serious here," he wrote on his profile, according to Bloomberg. "Just playing with the app."

Durov was once married to Daria Bondarenko, who he met at university, according to Russia Beyond, citing a documentary on Durov by filmmaker Rodion Chepel.

Durov once said Silicon Valley has "limited cultural life."

Durov was writing in response to journalist and YouTuber Yury Dud's film about Silicon Valley. The film has garnered 52 million views on YouTube.

In the post, Durov listed seven reasons he did not want to move to Silicon Valley.

"The US is not the best place to live or run an IT business," Durov wrote. "Local programmers are expensive, spoiled and often unable to focus on work due to the flow of outside suggestions and ideas."

Durov also described the United States as a "police state" and said he was attacked in San Francisco in June 2015 by thieves who wanted to steal his phone.

Durov is dedicated to keeping Telegram secure for all its users, no matter who they are or what they are doing.

—Pavel Durov (@durov) March 18, 2017

Telegram is the "app of choice" for terror networks like ISIS, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute. But Durov has so far refused to limit access to the app or moderate its content to deter any certain group.

"We cannot make messaging technology secure for everybody except terrorists," Durov said in an interview with CNN in February 2016. "It's either secure or not secure."

Durov is also something of an instigator on his personal accounts.

In 2014, for example, when the Russian state called for a ban on Vkontakte, Durov's response was to post a photo of a dog in a hoodie on Twitter.

When Vkontakte was accused of hosting pornography, he changed his Twitter handle from "VK CEO" to "Porn King," according to The Calvert Journal. And in 2017, he shared his passport photo on Twitter, writing that it's "strangely suitable for media articles about terrorists using Telegram."

French police arrested Durov amid an investigation into Telegram.

French authorities arrested Durov near Paris on August 24, 2024 amid an investigation into criminal activity on Telegram. Police nabbed Durov at Le Bourget airport as he tried to depart on his private jet.

An arrest warrant said Telegram had been used for money laundering, drug trafficking, and crimes against minors, among other offenses, the Associated Press reported. 

Elon Musk, the owner of X who has also resisted moderating content, called the incident evidence of "dangerous times."

Durov calls arrest a "misguided approach" in a post on Telegram.

"Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach," he wrote. "Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools."

He admitted that as the platform accrued a user base of 950 million, it faced some "growing pains" that made it easier for criminals to abuse. But the "claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue," he said. 

He said the platform takes down millions of posts and channels daily and has already started an internal process to combat the spread of criminal activity. 

Telegram has been banned in several countries over the years, including Iran, China, Thailand, and briefly in Russia. In his latest remarks, Durov reiterated that it would not compromise its principles to meet government regulations.  

"We are prepared to leave markets that aren't compatible with our principles, because we are not doing this for money," he wrote. "We are driven by the intention to bring good and defend the basic rights of people, particularly in places where these rights are violated.

Durov announced changes to Telegram's user data policies

In September, Durov announced that Telegram would change its user data and privacy policies. 

"We've made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests," Durov said in a Telegram post.

Durov also said moderators (with the help of AI) have improved safety on Telegram Search after its features had been "abused by people who violated our Terms of Service to sell illegal goods." 

"These measures should discourage criminals. Telegram Search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods," Durov said. "We won't let bad actors jeopardize the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users." 

The new policies were implemented globally, the CEO said.

Durov's former partner, Irina Bolgar, accused him of child abuse.

The New York Times reported that a Swiss complaint Bolgar made last year against Durov accused him of abusing their youngest son five times between 2021 and 2022 and failing to pay child support. 

"The carefully crafted image of Durov as a defender of freedom collapses when faced with his personal life,"  Bolgar told the Times.

The pair met in 2012 and had a decadelong relationship, but Bolgar said that he became psychologically abusive in 2021.

Durov's representatives, meanwhile, dismissed her allegations, stating they never had a romantic relationship and asserting that Bolgar used the child support Durov paid her on luxury goods. 

"Mr. Durov has many children, and he supports each of them equally at a rate of $10,000 per month per child," the spokesman wrote in a statement to the Times. "Mr. Durov now hopes that the Swiss justice system will resolve this dispute so that the funds misappropriated by Ms. Bolgar can be used for their intended purpose: supporting the children."

Bolgar denied those claims and provided evidence of their relationship with receipts for vacations, years of photos, and a notarized document promising 150,000 Euros a month in child support, according to the Times. 

Durov offered free IVF treatments to Russian women who would have his babies.

It would seem Durov wants more children. He funded IVF treatments for women who would have his babies.

A spokesperson at the AltraVita IVF Clinic in Moscow previously told Business Insider that the fertility program is only open to Russian women. Treatment would normally cost about $5,000, the spokesperson said.

Durov has found himself enmeshed in the pronatalist crowd — that is, people who believe they have to fight declining fertility rates by having many children.

Durov made sperm donations multiple times, resulting in him fathering "over 100 biological kids" in a dozen countries, he said in a Telegram post in July.

"The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I'm proud that I did my part to help alleviate it," Durov said in the post. "I also want to help destigmatize the whole notion of sperm donation and incentivize more healthy men to do it, so that families struggling to have kids can enjoy more options."

• Ben & Jerry's accused its parent company, Unilever, of ousting its CEO, court documents show.
• Ben & Jerry's suit against Unilever, which is ongoing, accused it in a new filing of silencing activism.
• Attorneys for Ben & Jerry's said activism is integral to its brand, attracting customers.

Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's accused its parent company Unilever of ousting its chief executive, according to new court filings.

The removal of CEO David Stever came after disagreements over the ice cream brand's commitment to social and political activism, which Unilever intended to "silence," attorneys for Ben & Jerry's said in a motion filed on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York as part of an ongoing lawsuit between the two.

"Unilever has repeatedly threatened Ben & Jerry's personnel, including CEO David Stever, should they fail to comply with Unilever's efforts to silence the Social Mission," attorneys for Ben & Jerry's said in the lawsuit. "Unilever's motive for removing Mr. Stever is his commitment to Ben & Jerry's Social Mission and Essential Brand Integrity."

Unilever informed the Ben & Jerry's Independent Board, which manages its social brand and mission, on March 3 that it would be replacing Stever, the filing said.

Stever served as the company's chief executive since May 2023 after spending decades working up the ranks of the company, according to multiple reports.

It was not immediately clear if Stever's removal was fully completed. Ben & Jerry's attorneys alleged there were breaches in the approved process of a chief executive's removal and motioned for the courts to prompt Unilever to "comply with the CEO appointment and removal procedure."

In response to a request for comment from Business Insider, Unilever leveled similar allegations toward Ben & Jerry's, stating that "decisions on the appointment, compensation and removal of the Ben & Jerry's CEO will be made by Unilever after good faith consultation and discussion with the B&J's Independent Board."

"Regrettably, despite repeated attempts to engage the Board and follow the correct process, we are disappointed that the confidentiality of an employee career conversation has been made public. We hope that the B&J Independent Board will engage as per the original, agreed process," a Unilever spokesperson said in a statement.

Ben & Jerry's did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry's in 2000 for $326 million. But the relationship has recently become tense over political issues. In 2021, for example, the ice cream company tried to stop selling in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

In November, Ben & Jerry's sued Unilever, accusing it of silencing its political statements on the Gaza war. Tuesday's filing is part of that lawsuit.

On its social media accounts, Ben & Jerry's touts a litany of progressive social justice ideals, including voting rights, LGBTQ and BIPOC rights, and immigrant and refugee rights. The activism is "core to Ben & Jerry's DNA," and a "key part of its business" in attracting customers, the company's attorneys said in the lawsuit.

"Consequently, every act of muzzling, suppressing, or publicly undermining the company's social activism causes real, calculable, and significant financial and reputational harm to Ben & Jerry's," the ice cream company's attorneys said in the lawsuit.

March 19, 2025 — This story has been updated to include a comment from Unilever sent after publication.

• SpaceX's Starship exploded after its latest launch to space, causing flight diversions and viral videos.
• The Federal Aviation Administration closed Florida airspace after the SpaceX incident.
• A previous Starship explosion in January also caused debris over the Caribbean.

Mariah Davenport and Dane Siler were over an hour into their flight when they saw it: flaming debris out their window.

The young couple, both college students in Wisconsin, told Business Insider that they were heading back to the US on Thursday from the Dominican Republic where they had been vacationing in Punta Cana.

Siler said the Frontier pilot had warned them that the flight from the Dominican Republic to Chicago might take a little longer because of a diversion in the flight path due to the SpaceX Starship launch Thursday night.

However, they were surprised when, not yet midway through the flight, they heard the pilot make an announcement.

"He said, 'If you look to your right, one of the rockets just blew up,'" Siler said. "I'm like, what? So then we looked through a window, and that's when I grabbed my phone and recorded it."

A video of the flaming debris that Davenport posted on TikTok went viral, accruing over 12 million views in a matter of days.

SpaceX's Starship spun out of control shortly after its launch and exploded as it reached space. The Federal Aviation Administration closed the airspace over much of Florida after the incident and issued a temporary ground stop at several airports.

The explosion comes a month after a Starship exploded during a test flight in January and rained debris down over the Caribbean, causing similar flight disruptions and diversions.

"We thought it was cool," Siler said. "We didn't think we were in any danger, and then 20 minutes later, he told us that we were going to have to go back to Punta Cana, so that was another hour and a half."

Davenport said she was unnerved when, after the plane had landed back in Punta Cana to refill on gas, she overheard a flight attendant mumble, "That was too close for comfort."

"Hearing that was very frightening," Davenport said.

The couple eventually made it home several hours later than planned.

The FAA is investigating the incident.

Frontier and SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Ben Stiller, the 'Severance' director and EP, sees similarities between Lumon Industries and Apple.
• Stiller discussed the hit AppleTV+ series with Apple exec Eddy Cue at SXSW in Austin.
• 'Severance' Season 2 is currently airing and explores themes of corporate culture and capitalism.

Ben Stiller, the executive producer and director of the AppleTV+ series "Severance," said he sees similarities between the fictitious corporation in his show and the real-life global tech giant Apple Inc.

"Severance" follows a group of employees at Lumon Industries whose work is so mysterious that their work personas (or "innies") are medically severed from their outside selves (or "outies") with a small chip implanted in their brains.

The series, which is in the midst of airing its second season, offers striking visuals and a nuanced take on corporate culture, the impacts of capitalism, and the depth of human emotion.

Stiller spoke about the show with Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Services (including AppleTV+), at the 2025 SXSW Conference & Festivals in Austin, Texas.

"I think we were lucky in that when we started out, you guys gave us a lot of creative freedom," Stiller said.

Stiller suggested that Apple has similar mysterious qualities that draw the viewer into Lumon in "Severance."

He's not the first one to point this out. Fans have previously drawn comparisons between the two companies, such as the circular architecture at their respective headquarters and the reverence allotted to their company founders.

"It's funny because people talk about, 'Oh wow, you know, Apple is a huge corporation, and Lumon is a huge corporation,'" Stiller said.

He added that it is "the perfect show to be on Apple" because of its aesthetic and mystery of "what's going on" in the company — similar to Apple.

"But I've never once ever gotten any, you know, like note or anything from Apple about anything we do, and I feel like there's an intrigue about Apple," Stiller said. "By the way, how is Apple doing? Because sometimes I worry, are you guys doing okay?"

Cue said Apple is doing great and working on creating "new things that people really love."

Spokespersons for AppleTV+ did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Throughout the second season's airing, fans have taken to social media in a frenzy to assemble theories about different aspects of the plot.

As the show progresses, Lumon's mission and objectives become increasingly sinister, and Adam Scott's Mark Scout tries to piece together the mystery behind his workplace and his severed memories.

Business Insider secured quotes from the interview via live closed captions from SXSW's website.

• Meredith Whittaker, the president of Signal, said agentic AI poses serious security risks to users.
• Agentic AI refers to bots that can reason and perform tasks for humans without their input.
• But having a bot complete tasks for users means giving it access to reams of data, Whittaker said.

Signal President Meredith Whittaker is skeptical about agentic AI — that is, AI agents that can complete tasks or make decisions without human input.

While some tech titans have touted how helpful agentic AI can be and launched AI agents for users to try, Whittaker warned of the privacy risks posed by the autonomous agents while speaking at the SXSW 2025 Conference and Festivals in Austin on Friday.

"I think there's a real danger that we're facing," Whittaker said, "in part because what we're doing is giving so much control to these systems that are going to need access to data."

Whittaker is the president of the non-profit Signal Technology Foundation that runs the end-to-end encrypted Signal app known for its digital security.

An AI agent is marketed like a "magic genie bot" that can think multiple steps ahead and complete tasks for users so that "your brain can sit in a jar, and you're not doing any of that yourself," Whittaker said.

As an example, she said agentic AI could accomplish tasks like finding a concert, booking tickets, and opening an app like Signal to message friends with concert ticket details. But at every step in that process, the AI agent would access data that the user may want to keep private, she said.

"It would need access to our browser, an ability to drive that. It would need our credit card information to pay for the tickets. It would need access to our calendar, everything we're doing, everyone we're meeting. It would need access to Signal to open and send that message to our friends," she said. "It would need to be able to drive that across our entire system with something that looks like root permission, accessing every single one of those databases, probably in the clear because there's no model to do that encrypted."

Whittaker added that an AI agent powerful enough to do that would "almost certainly" process data off-device by sending it to a cloud server and back.

"So there's a profound issue with security and privacy that is haunting this sort of hype around agents, and that is ultimately threatening to break the blood-brain barrier between the application layer and the OS layer by conjoining all of these separate services, muddying their data, and doing things like undermining the privacy of your Signal messages," she said.

Whittaker isn't the only one worried about the risks posed by agentic AI.

Yoshua Bengio, the Canadian research scientist regarded as one of the godfathers of AI, issued a similar warning while speaking to Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.

"All of the catastrophic scenarios with AGI or superintelligence happen if we have agents," Bengio said, referring to artificial general intelligence, the threshold at which machines can reason as well as humans can.

"We could advance our science of safe and capable AI, but we need to acknowledge the risks, understand scientifically where it's coming from, and then do the technological investment to make it happen before it's too late, and we build things that can destroy us," Bengio said.

• President Donald Trump on Thursday again delayed enforcing tariffs on Canada and Mexico by a month.
• The president's flip-flopping on international trade has caused price hikes and diplomatic friction.
• Supply chain scholars say economic uncertainty is a feature of Trump's trade policy, not a bug.

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that his 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada would be delayed another month, once again backtracking on his aggressive international trade policy proposals.

Trump's repeated reversals are key to his economic strategy, though they may not pay off in the long term as they erode relationships with the nation's allies, supply chain and conflict resolution scholars told Business Insider.

The continued flip-flopping has left the US economy with a sense of whiplash. Businesses and markets have to keep up with the latest policies amid a budding trade war, while uncertainty in the world's biggest economy makes waves across the rest of the globe.

The tariff tension between the North American trade partners is creating diplomatic friction between the US and its allies, in addition to driving cross-industry cost increases and consumer price hikes, Nick Vyas, the founding director of the University of Southern California's Randall R. Kendrick Global Supply Chain Institute, told Business Insider.

He said that's a feature of Trump's trade policy, not a bug.

"Everyone has to understand that you're on the long ride here with this jolt, this is not just turbulence for a few seconds," Vyas said.

Since Trump prides himself on being a master dealmaker, Vyas said the president seems to believe he'll be able to achieve his policy goals by increasing the pressure on Canada and Mexico — and that means keeping each country's leader off balance at the negotiating table.

"It all fits into his America First strategy," Vyas said. "But I think we're going to have to make sure that we don't alienate our allies."

While his tariff threats may be an attempt to strengthen the US' economic standing, Trump's repeated backtracking may not help the implementation of his other policy priorities in the long term, Andrea Schneider, the director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at the Cardozo School of Law, told BI.

"When you threaten and then continue to walk things back, obviously, the threat loses its power," Schneider said. "Whatever strategy message we're trying to send is confusing and is less strong because of it."

Schneider said the mixed signals and confusing trade policies don't give businesses the predictability needed to make decisions like hiring, expanding research and development, or developing a new product. These factors increase market volatility, making consumers unhappy, and can drive social unrest as prices of everyday goods continue to rise.

"The world is watching. Markets are watching," she said. "The chaos and unpredictability might, in certain instances, make sense in diplomatic relationships or one-on-one negotiations. But it doesn't work in a situation like this, where every US business is trying to figure out what to do tomorrow and can't predict what the policy will be."

A game of tariff brinkmanship

Thursday's announcement is the second monthlong delay Trump has imposed since he signed executive orders calling for sweeping tariffs in February. The duties — including 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods and 10% on Chinese goods — went into effect on Tuesday. Energy products from Canada were also subjected to a separate 10% tariff.

China and Canada retaliated immediately on Tuesday with tariffs on US products. Mexico said it would follow suit on Sunday, a move that Gladys McCormick, the Moskowitz endowed chair in Mexico-US relations at Syracuse University, told BI was likely in anticipation of an enforcement delay.

"To be honest with you, I wasn't surprised, nor do I think Mexicans were surprised," McCormick said. "That lag, in essence, gives the Trump administration an off-ramp to really kind of think through how catastrophically devastating this would be to both countries, not just Mexico."

Trump is playing a game of brinkmanship, or pushing a risky situation to the brink of disaster before backing down in the hopes of a positive outcome, which has been an "intrinsic part of the Trump playbook," McCormick said.

"If and when Trump does follow through with tariffs, it's not going to be this sort of wholesale 25% on everything. Rather, they will ultimately end up taking a selective approach to certain industries or certain sectors," McCormick said. "For example, I think that manufacturing, and then especially the automobile industry, would be so severely hard hit on both sides of the border that that's going to be off the table."

'This is very much about political theater'

In the meantime, the US and its major trading partners are stuck in a battle of wills instigated by Trump. The president has repeatedly said the duties will help drive down immigration and fentanyl flowing across US borders. However, Christopher Tang, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and scholar of global supply chain management, told BI he isn't convinced that's Trump's primary goal.

"Trump claimed that this tariff is a penalty for Canada and Mexico for not doing enough to curb illegal immigration and illegal drug trade," Tang said. However, he added that the rates of crossings for both migrants and drugs are down at both borders, so he thinks that rationale is "an excuse."

Instead, Tang said he believes Trump's tariffs are more likely an attempt to "close the backdoor" for Chinese products using Mexico as a transition point to avoid tariffs. China has used Mexico as a workaround to avoid tariffs by shipping the parts or semi-finished products — like furniture — to Mexico, performing final assembly in Mexico, and then shipping the finished goods to the US without paying its own tariffs, Tang said.

"If the goal is to close the backdoor for importing Chinese goods without paying tariffs, it can be effective, but the implementation can be complicated due to the mass volume and limited manpower," Tang said. "If the goal is to nudge Canada and Mexico to expand its control of illegal immigrants and illegal drugs, only time will tell."

Mexico, in particular, has already spent years addressing both problems by sending its National Guard to the Mexican-US border to cut off immigrants and working to shutter fentanyl labs in the nation, McCormick, the Syracuse University professor, said. She added that the demands from the Trump administration have been "vague," which has been "worrisome" to those who wonder when enough will be enough.

"The absence of metrics suggests that this is not about fentanyl and it's not about immigration. This is very much about political theater," McCormick said.

• Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto fraudster serving a 25-year sentence, spoke with Tucker Carlson from behind bars.
• Bankman-Fried is bunking near Sean "Diddy" Combs, who is facing sex trafficking charges.
• Bankman-Fried said he's made friends and they play chess.

Sam Bankman-Fried talked life behind bars in a wide-ranging jailhouse interview with Tucker Carlson.

Between crypto chatter and sharing his strategies for making friends in jail, Bankman-Fried also opened up about living alongside Sean "Diddy" Combs in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center where both men are being held.

"He's been kind," Bankman-Fried said of Diddy. The rapper was arrested last year and is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in late 2023 at a criminal trial that dissected the fall of FTX, his defunct cryptocurrency exchange.

He is serving a 25-year prison sentence.

"I've made some friends," Bankman-Fried told the former Fox News anchor. "It's a weird environment. It's sort of a combination of a few other high profile cases and then a lot of, you know, ex gangsters, alleged ex gangsters."

The interview with Carlson prompted Mark Botnick, Bankman-Fried's media representative, to resign. He told Business Insider he was not aware that Carlson was planning to interview Bankman-Fried and had no involvement with it.

On-camera interviews from prisons and jails are unusual in the United States. The Metropolitan Detention Center, where Bankman-Fried is incarcerated while appealing his criminal conviction, is equipped with video teleconferencing equipment typically used for inmates to communicate with their lawyers. A representative for the jail declined to comment on Bankman-Fried's interview with Carlson but said that video interviews can be arranged with members of the media.

Here's what Bankman-Fried and Carlson talked about:

Hanging out with Sean "Diddy" Combs

Carlson posted a video of the 40-minute interview on social media on Thursday. He called Bankman-Fried and Combs "two of the most famous prisoners in the world," asking Bankman-Fried what it's like living in such close quarters.

"I've only seen one piece of him, which is Diddy in prison. He's been kind to people in the unit. He's been kind to me. It's a position no one wants to be in. Obviously, he doesn't, I don't," Bankman-Fried said. "It's kind of a soul crushing place for the world in general, and what we see are just the people that are around us on the inside rather than who we are on the outside."

Bankman-Fried also said that other inmates have challenged his chess skills.

"They're good at chess. That's one thing I learned," Bankman-Fried told Carlson. "Former armed robbers who don't speak English and probably didn't graduate middle school — a surprising number are surprisingly good at chess."

The unflagging passage of time

Bankman-Fried turned 33 on Thursday but downplayed the milestone to Carlson.

"You're not going to tell Diddy it's your birthday tomorrow? I don't believe you," Tucker joked during the interview, which was apparently filmed Wednesday.

"Someone else might, but I'm not," Bankman-Fried replied.

Bankman-Fried says he expects to be in his late 40s when released from prison — if he's not pardoned first.

When Carlson asked whether he thinks he'll make it that long, the ex-crypto mogul said he didn't know.

Jail economics

In a world with no money — much less cryptocurrency — inmates use muffins as a medium of exchange, Bankman-Fried said.

Bankman-Fried said he hoards muffins as part of the "muffin economy" but doesn't eat them. He sticks to rice and beans and ramen noodles, he said.

"The scale of everything is so diminished in prison, you see people fighting over a single banana," Bankman-Fried said.

Crypto policy under Donald Trump's presidency

Trump has overseen far friendlier crypto policies than former President Joe Biden, having already dropped numerous cases against crypto companies.

Bankman-Fried, who was found guilty of defrauding customers and investors of his cryptocurrency exchange, said less government involvement in individual finances is a good thing.

"If you look at what Trump said going into office, there are a lot of good things," Bankman-Fried said.

But he said that, in order to shift things in the right direction, Trump would have to take on financial regulators.

"Changing the guard helps. But financial regulators — they're big, giant bureaucracies in the federal government," he said.

Having children

Bankman-Fried discussed his effective altruism philosophy with Carlson, explaining that he prioritized actions that did the most good to the most people.

Carlson asked Bankman-Fried where children fit into his worldview.

"Is having children part of your effective altruism philosophy?" Carlson asked Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried responded that he felt like his employees at FTX were his children.

"For five years, I felt like I had 300 children, most days: my employees. Obviously, I couldn't be a father to all of them. But I felt responsible for them."

Carlson took the point further.

"Have any of those 300 employees visited you in jail?" Carlson asked.

Bankman-Fried said that none had.

"Probably ought to have some real kids at some point, don't you think? Because when things go bad, they tend to stick around," Carlson told Bankman-Fried, who is set to spend the next two decades in prison.

• Some Americans have promised to boycott companies that dropped their DEI policies.
• A pastor in the Atlanta area is encouraging his congregation to "fast" from Target for 40 days.
• The timing of the boycott aligns with Lent, which started on Wednesday.

Thousands of people have committed to boycotting corporations in the name of now-defunct diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that companies have dismissed since President Donald Trump's rise.

Now, some are boycotting in the name of the Lord.

Jamal Bryant, the pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church outside Atlanta, is calling on his congregation to "fast" from Target this Lenten season, which began Wednesday. Christians who observe Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter, typically do so by fasting or giving something up.

"Lent is a holy season of prayer and is about sacrifice," Bryant told Business Insider. "So not only are we picketing with our pocketbooks, but partitioning with our prayers." Bryant said Target has "put consumerism over decency."

Target did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Target announced in January that it would be rolling back several DEI initiatives. Some Target shoppers were outraged that the company followed the lead of several others that have dismantled their DEI policies, many of which were bolstered in 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter movement.

During his first week back in office, President Donald Trump promised the end of DEI programs in the federal government and reversed a 1965 order that barred government contractors from engaging in employment discrimination. Many major companies were quick to pull back on their diversity programs to remain in the good graces at the White House.

About 1 in 8 Target shoppers is Black, according to a data analysis from Numerator, which assesses retail consumers.

"The way that the Black community has had brand loyalty to Target, but them to not express that same loyalty to our community," Bryant said, "we felt was a slap in the face."

Bryant started a pledge to encourage people to fast from Target, and he said 110,000 people have signed on thus far. Those who commited to the fast received a digital directory of Black businesses they can support instead, Bryant said.

"People are still spending," he said. "They're just being more mindful about where they spend and how they do it."

• Several films that have been nominated at this year's Academy Awards used AI in some way.
• Whether they secure trophies at the Oscars could influence how Hollywood views AI moving forward.
• Some industry insiders say AI is here to stay and are calling for more transparency about its use.

Actors, directors, and filmmakers aren't the only ones with futures at stake at the Academy Awards.

The results of Sunday's Oscars ceremony could also further the industry's embrace — or distrust — of artificial intelligence. Several big-ticket movies up for golden statues this year were created in part with AI, sometimes provoking fierce criticism online.

"AI" has become a two-letter dirty word in Hollywood in recent years, provoking pushback from creative types who believe that movie magic should be the product of primarily human — not digital — brains. That extends across everything from scriptwriting to voice dubbing.

The technology survived the drubbing it endured during the dual strikes of 2023, however, and is now an uninvited guest at the industry's most glamorous night.

"Tonight's Oscars will be a turning point for AI use in Hollywood," said Warner Bailey, a former assistant at the Hollywood talent agency WME who has gone on to become a heroic figure for industry workers thanks to his popular Instagram meme account, Assistants vs. Agents.

"Whether it's entertainment or beyond, I think our industry specifically needs to establish clear guidelines" to safeguard "artistic integrity," he said in a phone interview with Business Insider ahead of the ceremony on Sunday. "AI," he added, "isn't going anywhere."

AI's role in some of this year's biggest films

AI helped bring some of this year's biggest films to life.

According to multiple reports, AI enhanced Karla Sofía Gascón's voice in "Emilia Pérez." An advanced form of machine learning is said to have helped give the Fremen their glowy, hypnotic blue eyes in "Dune: Part Two." AI was also involved in the post-production of "A Complete Unknown."

In January, Dávid Jancsó, the editor of "The Brutalist" — which follows a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor — said that AI helped perfect the lead actors' accents in the film.

"I am a native Hungarian speaker, and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce," Jancsó told RedShark News, a publisher focused on film and television, in January. "We also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference."

His admission prompted scrutiny and online chatter, forcing the director to later clarify that AI was "used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only" and that the filmmakers strived to "preserve the authenticity" of the actors' performances.

These instances have generated enough noise that even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the group behind the awards ceremony — is reportedly considering adding a requirement for filmmakers to disclose the use of such tools to its Oscars submission guidelines.

A representative for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Variety reported that the Academy is expected to release its updated rules for the 2026 ceremony in April.

Robert Thompson, a professor and director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, told BI that AI's use in moviemaking could impact how films are judged.

"Whoever is doing nominations or voting in any organization that's giving out awards is going to have to figure out if they have a zero tolerance for artificial intelligence," Thompson said. "Or they're going to look at any performance that has artificial intelligence — which is going to be more and more as we go along — and make the judgment accordingly."

These are some of the reasons people like Bailey think the industry and moviegoing audiences need more transparency about AI use.

"There's a growing gray area in defining artistic contribution" as AI's use becomes more widespread, he said. "Disclosing when and how AI was used doesn't necessarily diminish a work's value, but it does provide clarity for audiences, industry professionals, and award committees, especially in the context of institutions like The Academy whose objective is to recognize excellence in the arts."

Why AI is different than other Hollywood tech

To be sure, Hollywood is no stranger to technology. Some of the most iconic moments in cinema have only been made possible thanks to greenscreens and computer-generated imagery, or CGI.

But that's different from AI, which doesn't require manual human inputs to create images or operate like CGI does. The ability of AI to supplant so many parts of the creative process was central to the 2023 actors' and writers' strikes — schisms that divided the entertainment industry and sent thousands onto the picket lines across Los Angeles and New York.

Even their historic efforts to put parameters around AI's use, however, haven't been enough to halt its march. So long as investors, financiers, and production companies see money-making potential, Hollywood probably isn't going to say farewell to AI.

Look at Lionsgate, the production company behind titles like "The Hunger Games" and "La La Land." Last year, it inked a partnership with Runway, an AI media company, to focus on the "creation and training of a new AI model, customized on Lionsgate's proprietary catalog," according to a 2024 press release.

So this year's Oscars might be less about whether Hollywood will embrace AI (that seems inevitable) — but more about how quickly.

Though perhaps a dark experiment, we decided to put the question to the world's most famous AI, ChatGPT. When asked whether it thinks AI will one day be involved in all moviemaking, it gave a reply with which people like Bailey would likely agree.

"AI is already playing a growing role in various aspects of filmmaking, and it's likely to be involved in nearly all movie productions in some capacity moving forward," ChatGPT said.

But, it continued, adding just one caveat: "Full automation of moviemaking is unlikely, as human creativity and artistic vision remain essential."

• Trump is a dealmaker. But his Ukraine deal is in limbo after a public blowup in the Oval Office.
• He and Volodymyr Zelenskyy had an extraordinary argument in front of cameras on Friday.
• BI asked negotiation and conflict-resolution experts what they thought of the unprecedented clash.

President Donald Trump styles himself as a dealmaker.

But a minerals deal with Ukraine is now in limbo after his public blowup with the country's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the Oval Office.

The on-camera clash offered a rare public insight into leadership and strategy during one of the president's highest-stakes negotiations.

Negotiating tactics

"You're either going to make a deal or we're out," Trump said at the height of the heated exchange, apparently referring to US commitment to Ukraine's defense. "And if we're out, you'll fight it out. I don't think it's going to be pretty, but you'll fight it out."

Andrea Schneider, an expert on conflict resolution at the Cardozo School of Law, told BI that the ultimatum suggested Trump was not the "magical negotiator" some say he is.

"The last thing you do is give the other party all the cards," Schneider said. "In whatever the negotiation, why would Russia give Ukraine anything? Why would Russia give us anything? How is this possibly making the United States stronger?"

She said Trump's words had strengthened Russia's hand, "which is sort of mind-boggling."

Curtis Friedel, an associate professor and director of the Center for Cooperative Problem Solving at Virginia Tech, said the meeting was more about "ego" than nuanced negotiation or leadership.

"It appears to me, from a negotiation perspective, that stakeholders wanted a deal more than the leaders wanted a deal. Both parties thus ended up embarrassing themselves," Friedel said.

Zelenskyy ultimately left Washington without signing the deal, which would have given America access to Ukraine's mineral riches in exchange for "a long-term financial commitment to the development of a stable and economically prosperous Ukraine."

Zelenskyy's departure from Washington was so abrupt, it meant skipping a planned lunch.

"I would like to know if the White House chef was warned," Schneider said.

Playing by different rules

At one point in the meeting, Trump suggested Zelenskyy was an obstacle in the negotiations with Russia because of the "hatred he's got for Putin."

As the tensions escalated, Vice President JD Vance suggested the Ukrainian leader had not shown enough gratitude for US aid.

Eileen Babbitt, a professor focused on international conflict management at Tufts University, said she believed Vance's accusation and Trump's comment that Zelenskyy did not "have any cards to play" suggested the United States was "seeking to end the war on Putin's terms regardless of Ukraine's interests."

Stanley Renshon, a political science professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, said that Trump's perspective in the meeting appeared to have been on the "large picture," while Zelenskyy was focused on the immediate goal of defending his country.

"The result is a clash of perspectives that is hard, if not impossible, to reconcile," Renshon said.

Deal or no deal

Zelenskyy later said he hoped a deal could still be made and stressed that US support had been vital to Kyiv continuing its fight.

On Saturday, he received a warmer welcome in London from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who reaffirmed his "unwavering" support for Ukraine.

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Starmer said he felt "uncomfortable" watching the events in the Oval Office, adding, "Nobody wants to see that."

The prime minister said he was now focused on acting as a bridge between Zelenskyy and Trump and that he would work with France and Ukraine on a cease-fire plan to present to the United States.

Zelenskyy met with European leaders in London on Sunday, including Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, as they gathered for crisis talks to discuss support for Kyiv.