Trump Ordered Every Government Lawyer in America to Shut Up
Executive Order 14215 buried a gag order inside Section 7. Here is what it actually does to the lawyers who work for you.
On February 18, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14215. The title sounds boring. Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies. Government paperwork dressed up in civics class language.
Read Section 7.
That one paragraph rewrites the rules for every lawyer working inside the executive branch of the United States government.
No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations, guidance, and positions advanced in litigation, unless authorized to do so by the President or in writing by the Attorney General.1
Translation. If you work for the federal government and you disagree with the President or the Attorney General on what the law says, you stay quiet. You file the brief their way. You sign the regulation their way. You write the guidance their way. Your professional judgment becomes property of the White House.
I’m sharing this post because I referenced the Executive Order in last night’s post "BREAKING NEWS: This $1.7 Billion Trump Settlement Is the Most Corrupt Thing I Have Seen in Forty Years of Practicing Law, and a lot of you told me that you were not aware of it.
What This Order Covers
The order reaches further than most headlines told you. Section 7 applies to every executive branch employee. Every Department of Justice litigator. Every Department of Labor lawyer. Every general counsel at every agency. It covers regulations, guidance documents, and positions taken in court. If a career attorney at DOJ believes a Trump policy violates the Constitution, that attorney faces a choice. Argue the President’s position anyway. Or leave.
The order also pulls the so-called independent agencies into the White House orbit. The FCC, FTC, SEC, EEOC, and FEC, among others. Agencies Congress designed to operate one step removed from any single president. The order requires them to submit significant regulations to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review, plants a White House Liaison inside each one, and hands OMB clearance authority over their strategic plans.
Congress built those agencies to be insulated. The order strips that insulation.
The Quiet Part Out Loud
Listen to the people who built this thing.
OMB General Counsel Mark Paoletta said in February 2025 that too many lawyers in Trump’s first term disagreed with the President and tried to thwart him. His boss, OMB Director Russ Vought (also the key author of the ultra-right wing Project 2025 plan) said in 2023 that lawyers in Trump 1.0 would come in and say it is not legal, you cannot do that. He called those legal objections the place where so much of things break down in our country.
Read those sentences again. The complaint is not that the lawyers were wrong. The complaint is that they said no.
That is the entire purpose of legal counsel. A lawyer who only tells the client what the client wants to hear is not a lawyer. That is a yes man with a bar card.
Every honest lawyer knows that the hardest words to say to a demanding client are no, that is not legal. Those are also the most important words a lawyer ever says.
Executive Order 14215 makes those words a fireable offense.
Why You Should Care
The Office of Legal Counsel at DOJ has reviewed presidential actions for legality since 1933. Republican and Democratic administrations alike accepted that OLC opinions bound the executive branch, even when the President wanted to do something else.
Former OLC head Jack Goldsmith, who served under George W. Bush, points out that two Trump 2.0 initiatives appear to run contrary to existing OLC opinions. The order rejecting birthright citizenship. The claim of unilateral presidential impoundment authority. When the President wants something OLC will not bless, the answer is no longer to drop the idea. The answer is to silence OLC.
What This Means for You
The government lawyer who refuses to file a frivolous case protects you. The agency attorney who blocks an unconstitutional regulation protects you. The DOJ career prosecutor who tells a political appointee no, we cannot indict that person without evidence, protects you.
Executive Order 14215 tells all of them to sit down and be quiet.
A democracy needs lawyers who say no to the people in power. Not as obstruction. As a feature of the system. The Framers wrote a Constitution that assumed power would be checked from inside the government, not only by courts or elections.
This order kicks one of those checks out from under the structure.
Read Section 7 yourself. Ask your representatives where they stand on it. Ask the lawyers you know what they think. Share this piece with someone who needs to read it.
I write Uncensored Objection because the most important stories are the ones the establishment hopes you will scroll past. Subscribe. Stay sharp. Speak up.
Mitch Jackson, Esq.
I can't wait for Nuremberg 2.0.
'When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.'
- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.