A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw |
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By Diana Novak Jones, Mike Scarcella and Sara Merken |
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The SEC plans to remove the top leaders at regional offices across the country as part of its cost-cutting recommendations to the Trump administration, our colleagues Chris Prentice and Douglas Gillison report.
Many of the SEC's staff are based in its D.C. headquarters, but the agency also has officials in offices from San Francisco to Miami who often lead agency investigations and lawsuits in high-profile matters. The SEC told directors across its 10 regional offices that their roles will be eliminated as part of the plan the agency submits next month. The SEC is under pressure from President Donald Trump to fire staff and slash costs.
"The regional leadership is what the home office has always looked to for making decisions about enforcement cases and exams,” said Andrew Calamari, a former director of the SEC's New York office. “This is a difficult layer to remove.” |
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U.S. District Court Judge S. Kato Crews in Denver rejected arguments that he should recuse from hearing a lawsuit challenging a collegiate athletic association's policy on the participation of transgender athletes because of a courtroom protocol he adopted recommending lawyers refer to people by their preferred pronouns.
- Prominent appellate lawyer and Donald Trump critic Neal Katyal, who is now at Milbank, joined a lawsuit challenging the president's effort to fire the head of a key agency that hears cases brought by federal government workers who are fired or disciplined.
- The California bar will allow those who fail its February bar exam to retake the attorney licensing test in July for free in response to the new test’s rocky rollout.
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Mark Meador, nominated as a Republican FTC commissioner, faces a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Meador’s clients at Kressin Meador Powers have included Yelp, Rumble and Uber, according to his financial disclosure.
- U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead in Seattle will hear arguments in a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s executive order halting entry through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The plaintiffs’ legal team includes lawyers from Perkins Coie.
- The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet is scheduled to hold a hearing focused on the impact on the U.S. justice system of a shortage of judges in federal courts. Judge Timothy Tymkovich of the 10th Circuit will be a witness.
- Disney is scheduled to go to trial to defend against claims that its hit animated film "Moana" illegally copied from filmmaker and animator Buck Woodall's 2003 treatment for his proposed film "Bucky." The case has been narrowed to only concern Disney's home-video distribution wing Buena Vista Home Entertainment.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Google’s search engine is eroding demand for original content and undermining publishers' ability to compete with its artificial intelligence-generated overviews, educational technology company Chegg said in a lawsuit in D.C. federal court.
- Drug compounders sued the FDA over its decision last week to remove Novo Nordisk's weight loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic from its shortage list, a move that will sharply curtail the compounders' ability to sell cheaper versions of the drugs.
- The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the legality of buffer zones used to protect access to abortion clinics and limit harassment of patients in a challenge brought by anti-abortion activists who have argued that their free speech rights were being violated.
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U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly threw out a $96 million jury verdict against genetic testing company CareDX that rival Natera had won after a 2024 trial over patent rights in DNA testing technology for kidney transplants.
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The 9th Circuit upheld the convictions of Theranos' founder Elizabeth Holmes and president Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, on charges of defrauding investors in the failed blood testing startup once valued at $9 billion.
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