After Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked calls this week by the Trump administration to impeach judges, social media users falsely claimed that he and other high-level legal professionals are part of a “secretive, invite only club.”

Many questioned the motives of members, hinting at coordinated efforts to oppose President Donald Trump.

Among those named was U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, who Trump had demanded be removed from the bench for his order blocking deportation flights that the president was carrying out by invoking wartime authorities from 18th century law.

But the group in question — the American Inns of Court — is hardly secretive given its large public presence, and there is no evidence that members are involved in nefarious activities targeting Trump. Roberts is no longer an active member and Boasberg is the president of a chapter that is no longer affiliated with the parent association.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: Roberts, Boasberg and other powerful legal professionals are part of a secret, invite-only club that is working against Trump.

THE FACTS: This is false. Roberts was a member of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court chapter of the organization prior to his confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2005, but he is not currently an active member of the organization, according to Executive Director Malinda Dunn.

Boasberg is the president of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, but the chapter disaffiliated from the parent association about 10 years ago when it decided it no longer wanted to pay dues to the national group, Dunn said. He was an active member prior to the chapter’s decision to operate independently.

Information on the American Inns of Court is readily available online. Chapters also have their own websites, which often include details about programs they host for members, typically focused on networking, education and mentorship. Dunn said that members have a wide range of political opinions, but that the organization itself is “assiduously apolitical.”

Some on social media, however, baselessly claimed that there is more to the group than meets the eye.

“It has been revealed that Chief Justice John Roberts is part of an elite, invite-only group called the American Inns of Court, alongside some of the most openly anti-Trump judges in D.C.,” reads one X post.

And yet a check of other members reveals a diverse group. Many current and former Supreme Court justices have been members of the American Inns of Court, according to Dunn, including Sandra Day O’Connor, Neil Gorsuch, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas.

Inns of Court have existed in the United Kingdom for hundreds of years. The American system, founded in 1980 out of discussions among legal professionals, including Chief Justice Warren Burger, is loosely based on this concept from across the pond.

The American Inns of Court states on its website that it is “dedicated to professionalism, ethics, civility, and excellence” and that its mission is to “inspire the legal community to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education, and mentoring.”

O’Connor said in a 2015 video that “maintaining and improving an ethics of professionalism is what the American Inns of Court are all about.”

There are more than 300 active chapters across the U.S. Each one manages its own membership and some are limited to practitioners in a certain legal field. Roberts’ former chapter, for example, states that “members are elected to the Inn after being nominated by a current member” and that they must be “actively engaged in appellate practice.”

Dunn said chapters are advised to ensure that their members include legal professionals with different levels of experience. Some may hold membership drives to recruit new faces.

Roberts is currently an honorary bencher in The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, an inn of court in the U.K. This is a purely ceremonial role that, according to Dunn. British inns of court will always offer such a position to Supreme Court justices when they are confirmed, she said.

Representatives for Roberts and Boasberg did not respond to a request for comment.

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Melissa Goldin, The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball removed references to “diversity” from its MLB Careers home page following an executive order by President Donald Trump that could lead to possible federal action against organizations using DEI programs in violation of his administration’s interpretation of civil rights law.

“Our values on diversity remain unchanged,” MLB said in a statement Friday. “We are in the process of evaluating our programs for any modifications to eligibility criteria that are needed to ensure our programs are compliant with federal law as they continue forward.”

The removal of the references was first reported by the website cupofcoffeenews.com.

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, who launched a Diversity Pipeline Program in 2016, said following an owners meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, last month that MLB was evaluating the interpretation of law coming from the federal government.

“Our values, particularly our values on diversity, remain unchanged, but another value that is pretty important to us is we always try to comply with what the law is,” he said. “There seems to be an evolution going on here. We’re following that very carefully. Obviously, when things get a little more settled, we’ll examine each of our programs and make sure that while the values remain the same that we’re also consistent with what the law requires.”

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/mlb

The Associated Press

Two California researchers said Friday that a U.S. government health publication instructed them to remove data on sexual orientation from a scientific manuscript that had been accepted for publication.

The researchers also said they were told to remove the words “gender,” “cisgender” and “equitable” from their paper, which looked at smoking among rural young adults.

The reason given for the changes was to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump, researchers Tamar Antin and Rachelle Annechino said in a blog post where they included screenshots of the revisions.

Instead of complying, the researchers withdrew their paper from Public Health Reports, the official journal of the U.S. Surgeon General and U.S. Public Health Service.

On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing government agencies to remove “gender ideology” from publications. He has signed other orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The researchers plan to publish their findings elsewhere, Antin told The Associated Press. In the blog post, Antin and Annechino urged other researchers to refrain from publishing in journals published by the federal government to avoid political interference.

“In normal times, this would never happen,” said Antin, director of the Center for Critical Public Health, a California-based research group. “I have never been asked to censor any articles for publication, nor, to my knowledge, have any of my colleagues ever been asked to censor words, word choice, or remove data from a publication in response to an executive order from the White House. This is extremely unusual.”

Screenshots in the blog post show suggested deletions of data in categories labeled “straight or heterosexual,” “gay or lesbian,” “bisexual” and “unknown.” A note says: “Per the Executive Order, we cannot include language surrounding gender.”

Understanding how smoking fits into the lives of rural young adults of all genders and sexual orientations can help tailor more effective public health messages, Antin said. And it’s a longstanding practice to include these demographic variables in research.

Antin said censorship threatens scientific integrity and, in this case, appears to violate the policy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which says that scientific findings should not be “unduly suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes.”

An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Carla K. Johnson, The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — When a White House adviser in the first Trump administration told TV viewers to “Go buy Ivanka stuff,” top government lawyers sprang into action, telling her she had violated ethics rules and warning her not to do it again.

Government ethics experts have varying opinions on whether the 2017 criticism of Kellyanne Conway went far enough, but many agree such violations now might not even draw an official rebuke.

A week after President Donald Trump turned the White House lawn into a Tesla infomercial for Elon Musk’s cars, a second sales pitch by a U.S. official occurred, this time for Tesla stock.

“It will never be this cheap,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Wednesday. “Buy Tesla.”

Government ethics experts say Lutnick broke a 1989 law prohibiting federal employees from using “public office for private gain,” later detailed to include a ban on ”endorsements.” Although presidents are generally exempt from government ethics rules, most federal employees are not and are often punished for violations, including rebukes like the one Conway got.

As of Friday, no public action had been taken against Lutnick and it was unclear whether he would suffer a similar fate.

“They’re not even thinking of ethics,” said Trump critic and former Republican White House ethics czar Richard Painter of administration officials.

Painter has equally low expectations of that other possible brake to future violations — public opinion: ”I don’t know if people care.”

In his first term, Trump opened his hotel near the Oval Office to foreign ambassadors and lobbyists in what many legal scholars argued was a violation of a constitutional ban against presidents receiving payments or gifts that could distort public policy for private gain. His company launched a new hotel chain called “America Idea” in hopes of cashing in on his celebrity. Trump even once proposed holding a G-7 meeting of world leaders at his then-struggling Doral golf resort.

The ‘Buy Ivanka’ rebuke

But the reaction to Conway’s “Ivanka stuff” comment suggested certain lines couldn’t be crossed.

Within days of Conway’s TV comments, the head of the federal ethics agency, the Office of Government Ethics, wrote a letter to the White House saying Trump’s adviser may have broken the law and urging a probe. A White House lawyer then met with Conway to remind her of the law and reported to the ethics office that she had assured him she would abide by it in future.

But this time, there is no head of the Office of Government Ethics. He was fired by Trump. Ditto for the inspector generals of various agencies who would head any investigation.

“What is likely to happen now? I really don’t know,” said Kedric Payne, chief lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit watchdog that sent a letter to the government ethics office on Friday calling for an investigation. “We no longer have the head of the Office of Government Ethics to push the Commerce Department to make sure the secretary acknowledges the law.”

Payne said Lutnick’s comment on TV may seem like a small transgression but it could snowball into a bigger problem if not punished.

“It starts with one TV appearance, but can develop into multiple officials asking people to support companies and products,” Payne said. “If there are no consequences, you get into a danger zone of a corruption.”

Trump critics point to other signs that Trump is careless with the law and ethical norms, citing his pardons for Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, a decision to allow his Trump Organization to strike business deals abroad and his attack on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act banning U.S. company bribes abroad to win business.

Jelly beans and airlines

When it comes endorsing products, presidents used to be far more circumspect.

Their comments were mostly quick asides expressing opinions of taste, such as when Harry Truman called Pillsbury flour the “finest” or John F. Kennedy said United Airlines was “reliable.”

Ronald Reagan famously enthused about his jelly beans habit, remarking that they were the “perfect snack.”

Trump had five Teslas lined up in the White House driveway last week as he praised Musk’s company. Then he slipped into a red Model S he had targeted for personal purchase, exclaiming, “Wow. That’s beautiful.”

“Presidents are allowed to have personal opinions on products they like and dislike,” said ethics lawyer Kathleen Clark, referring to the Truman through Reagan examples. ”But what Trump did was transform the White House into a set for advertising the products of a private company.”

“It’s the difference between holding an extravaganza and holding an opinion.”

Calls for Musk investigation

In the aftermath of the Tesla White House event, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and three other senators wrote a letter to the Office of Government Ethics saying that, while presidents are exempt from ethics law banning endorsements, Elon Musk isn’t and calling for an investigation.

A spokeswoman from Warren’s office said the government ethics office had not yet responded about what it planned to do about the White House Tesla endorsement. The Office of Government Ethics itself said it would not comment on either the Warren letter or Lutnick’s TV appearance.

The Commerce Department did not respond to Associated Press requests for comment.

Asked whether Lutnick would be reprimanded or an investigation opened, White House spokesman Kush Desai defended Lutnick, lauding “his immensely successful private sector career” and his “critical role on President Trump’s trade and economic team.”

Former White House ethics chief Painter says Democrats have also played loose with the ethics law.

He is harshly critical of the Clinton charity, the Clinton Foundation, which was taking donations from foreign governments when Hillary Clinton was the country’s chief diplomat as secretary of state. Painter also blasts former President Joe Biden for not removing his name from a University of Pennsylvania research institute when he was in office even though it appeared to be helping draw donations overseas.

But Painter says the slide from caring about ethics laws and norms to defiance has hit a new low.

“There’s been a deterioration in ethics,” he said. “What Biden did wasn’t good, but this is worse.”

Bernard Condon, The Associated Press