The American Bar Association has long been a swarm of communist thought and engagement. But while the almost 150-year-old “national words for the legitimate job” claims it’s comitted to to “defending rights and pursuing justice”, it fails on both works. The ABA has stood silent as far-left allies weaponized the government against their political enemies, and it has rallied around discriminatory policies in the name of” social justice” . ,
Now a group of lawmakers led by Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., is urging Senate colleagues to “disregard ABA recommendations on pending legislation or nominees” . ,
” It is a failed organization that is capable of impartially standing nominations and making legislative tips”, states a email from six conservative senators to American Bar Association President William R. Bay.  ,” As like, we will not acquire any ABA advice on pending policy or nominations, and we call upon our coworkers to do the same”.
The text, first obtained by The Federalist, is signed by Schmitt and other legislators Mike Lee, R-Utah, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio. It hammers a dishonest legal organization that has been on a campaign against Trump 2.0 for what the ABA costs as “wide-scale injustices of the law”, even as it cheered on President Trump’s communist successors for trampling the Constitution.  ,
Because it is a “biased and intellectually captured organization”, the senators assert the ABA has — in legal parlance — no standing in advising Congress, especially in its rankings on judicial nominations and pending policy. The lawmakers also are calling on the president and the Department of Justice” to remove the ABA from the judicial nomination process entirely” . ,
As the letter notes, for more than 70 years the ABA has played a role in rating judicial nominees, evaluating candidates as” Qualified or Not Qualified” . ,
” As we saw during the Biden Administration, the ABA’s scores were little more than social testimonials for the most extreme, left wing supporters”, the senators argue. ” The ABA endorsed clearly unqualified judicial nominees as ‘ Qualified’ or ‘ Also Qualified ‘ time and time again—including nominations that were so political that even the Democrat majority in the Senate had not affirm them”.
‘ It is Questionable ‘
In a series of rhetoric op-eds, the left-wing firm has lashed out at the Trump presidency, gassing on about “defending courts and the courts … Adhering to the Rule of Law, and Respecting the Separation of Powers and the three co-equal branches of government with specific duties and responsibilities”. The ABA’s Bay has pontificated at diameter on the “values that link us”. As the senators note in their email, the ABA has trampled on those same reported values and principles.  ,
The firm has railed and fought against the government’s attempt to trim the fat from a sluggish federal government through the Department of Government Performance, or DOGE. In particular, the ABA has sprung to the defense of the criminally wasteful U. S. Agency for International Development ( USAID ). The company has dumped trillions of taxpayer dollars into suspect-at-best international aid efforts. Next month, the ABA rejoiced in winning a temporary restraining order against the government’s move to reduce the money.  ,
” The actions of the president and other executive branch officials to dismantle the U. S. Agency for International Development ( USAID), which was established by Congress to administer billions of dollars of foreign assistance funding, is unprecedented”, Bay said in a press release.  ,
ABA doctors have good reason to fight therefore difficult for USAID. As the lawmakers note in the email, the relationship has failed to disclose that it has “received millions of dollars in revenue from USAID”. A federal spending database shows the ABA has raked in more than$ 18 million over the past two decades. That represents about 46 percent of the total$ 39.4 million federal funding the Bar has grabbed between fiscal years 2008 and 2025.
” It is unclear whether the ABA is committed to defending rights or its own resources of funding”, the legislators write.  ,
‘ Cover for the Biden Administration ‘
While Bay and the ABA presentation on the rule of law and protecting the judges, the senators ask where was the Bar when the Biden presidency was attacking both. As Biden rolled out” a key initiative limiting” the Supreme Court and his own Democrats pushed to package it, the ABA hosted a podcast musing about how doing but” may actually take balance” to the Supreme Court.
Curiously, the Illinois State Bar Association in a 2018 article lauded the ABA for sending” some of its best lawyers in Washington to help those fighting against]President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ] FDR’s plan” to pack the courts to preserve his New Deal agenda. The times sure have changed.  ,
When constitutionalist Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was targeted by a would-be assassin following incendiary leftist rhetoric, and when pro-abortion radicals fired off death threats against conservative justices after the court tossed out Roe v. Wade, the ABA “was silent, opting, instead, to cover for the Biden administration by targeting single judge divisions“, the senators note.  ,
If the association cared about the rule of law, the letter argues, it would have been as vociferous when Biden defied the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down his unconstitutional student loan bailout.  ,
” The Supreme Court tried to block me from relieving student debt. But they didn’t stop me. I’ve relieved student debt for over 5 million Americans. I’m going to keep going”, Biden declared in open defiance of the third branch’s authority — and crickets from the ABA.  ,
And where was the American Bar Association when the Biden administration was singlehandedly obliterating U. S. immigration law? As the senators note, Trump’s predecessor spent four years lawlessly driving “mass illegal immigration policies” in defiance of” Congress ‘ explicit demands” that the executive branch enforce the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Double Standard
Most significantly, the senators assert, the ABA was nowhere to be found as the Biden Department of Justice was engaging in the “unprecedented lawfare campaign” against the left’s No. 1 political enemy, Donald Trump.  ,
In his recent screed attacking Trump, the ABA’s president self-righteously insisted his organization rejects” the notion that the government can punish lawyers who represent certain clients or punish judges who rule certain ways”. The senators call B. S.  ,
” If the ABA ‘ reject]ed ] the notion that the government can punish lawyers who represent certain clients,’ then it would have stood up for the scores of attorneys who found themselves on the wrong side of the Biden Administration’s lawfare campaign against President Trump and anyone who dared defend him and advance his legal arguments in court”, the letter argues.  ,
Say their names, ABA: John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, James Troupis, Christina Bobb,  , Republican attorneys general, and many others. The leftist association has, not surprisingly, echoed the Democratic Party’s talking points in amping up the lawfare campaign against Trump and his representatives.  ,
‘ ABA Does not Speak for a Majority of Americans ‘
Not only is the ABA partisan, it is deeply out of touch with the electorate, the senators contend. In his op-ed, Bay arrogantly insists that” Americans expect better” than the policies Trump has pursued.  ,
” But President Trump won both the electoral and popular votes. It seems Americans expect — and want the Trump administration”, the letter challenges, adding that the ABA “disrespects the 77 million Americans who happily voted for President Trump by branding’ Americans ‘ as only those individuals who align with the ABA’s views. The ABA does not speak for a majority of Americans” . ,
Polling shows that a majority of Americans do not align with the Bar’s views on forced and divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies. As the senators ‘ letter notes, the ABA has endorsed everything from men competing in women’s sports to pushing racial quotas.  ,
As attorney W. Dyer Halpern opined last year in The New York Post, DEI is coming for lawyers. He noted the ABA’s 2022 mandate requiring member attorneys take the woke training.  ,
” New York’s mandatory DEI trainings are purveying the same rank racial ideology found in our universities. These’ educational’ sessions teach that the profession has been corrupted by white people, and that white supremacist culture must be actively routed out of the practice of law to make progress”, Halpern wrote.  ,
‘ Ideologically Captured ‘
Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson recently announced a new policy barring FTC political appointees from holding leadership roles in the ABA, participating in association events, or renewing their ABA memberships. And the independent federal agency will no longer cover Bar memberships or participation in ABA activities for FTC staff members.  ,
In a letter last month to FTC employees, Ferguson noted the” cozy relationship” between federal antitrust enforcers and the private antitrust bar — “facilitated by the Antitrust Law Section of the American Bar Association” The ABA’s history of leftist advocacy and attacks on the Trump administration “have made this relationship untenable”, Ferguson wrote.  ,
The senators praised Ferguson’s actions, urging more administrative agencies to follow his lead.  , In short, the lawmakers contend, there is no saving the ABA from its deep leftist biases.  ,
” Unfortunately, the ABA has shown itself to be an ideologically captured, leftist institution, as many warned in the first Trump Administration”, the letter charges.  ,
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
