Anthropic sues the Trump administration

Anthropic’s relationships with other federal contractors face irreparable harm following the Trump administration’s governmentwide ban on the company and determination that it’s a “supply-chain risk,” the Claude maker said in a lawsuit filed in a federal district court Monday. The legal challenge against the Pentagon, as well as multiple federal agencies and officials, seeks immediate and injunctive relief from President Donald Trump’s directive banning the company from government use and the Department of Defense’s designation of the company as a supply-chain risk. Among its arguments, Anthropic alleges the actions violate federal administrative procedure law, the company’s right to free speech, and are beyond existing legal authority. The lawsuit also provides new details about the ramifications for Anthropic’s work with other companies contracting with the federal government. At least one federal contractor that Anthropic has worked with to build custom applications has already “indicated that it may suspend that work or even remove Claude from existing deployments,” and others the company has worked with “are raising concerns, pausing collaborations, and considering terminating contracts,” according to the lawsuit. “Anthropic has no way to obtain redress from the government for those economic harms,” the company said. It estimated the actions by the Trump administration could jeopardize “hundreds of millions of dollars in the near term.” This one’s also related to the government’s ban of Anthropic, and the Secret Service can be added to the list of federal agencies or offices that said they won’t use the company’s Claude tool. The Department of Homeland Security component had used Anthropic’s Claude models for code generation, a focus area for many organizations, according to Secret Service CIO and Chief AI Officer Chris Kraft. “That application does have the ability to leverage Claude models … but they’re easy to change out,” Kraft said. “There’s a whole list of a bunch of different models that you can choose from, and we will follow the guidance and leverage other models.” The Secret Service joins a growing group of agencies that are phasing out Anthropic’s technology following the company’s clash with the Department of Defense in late February. Software developers at the Treasury Department had been using Claude Code, though Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that the agency is terminating use. The Office of Personnel Management, NASA, the Commerce Department, the General Services Administration and Department of Health and Human Services are untangling Anthropic from AI use cases, if they haven’t stopped using Claude already. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.